1) Tourism Roundtable
The High Representative, Paddy Ashdown, and the Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, Lidija Topic, will chair a roundtable about promoting tourism in BiH, tomorrow at the OHR. The High Representative’s view is that the best way of rebranding BiH is to highlight the BiH businesses that are already attracting tourists, and understand why and how their success can be supported, repeated and expanded.
Mr Semsudin Djeko of the BiH Tourism Association will brief the participants on the Association’s strategy for marketing BiH and upgrading its tourism infrastructure, Professor Sead Dazdarevic will outline the core proposals in the draft BiH Tourism Law, and Mr Amir Hadzic of the BiH Hotel Owners’ Association will explain the Association’s plan for introducing a standard hotel classification system throughout BiH.
Representatives of 12 countries and three international organizations have been invited to participate. The roundtable will focus on ways in which other countries’ tourism expertise could be made available to the BiH tourism sector.
The High Representative, Foreign Minister Mladen Ivanic and Deputy Foreign Minister Topic will visit five capitals in May to promote BiH as a tourism destination. During their promotional tour HR and BiH officials will visit London, Paris, The Hague, Stockholm and Berlin where they engage tourist experts, tourist media, and representatives of tourist associations and travel companies to start thinking about BIH as new tourist destination that should to be introduced into offers to their clients. At the same time, a campaign is underway to upgrade the country’s tourism infrastructure. Tomorrow’s roundtable is part of this upgrading effort.
There will be a photo spray at the beginning of the roundtable, at 13.30, and there will be a press conference at the conclusion of the roundtable, at 15.30, at which the High Representative and Minister Topic will take questions. We will be issuing a media advisory later today.