Deputy Prime Minister of Serbia and Minister of Trade, Tourism, and Telecomunications Rasim Ljajić has opened the Fish Fest near the Nebojša Tower in Belgrade, emphasizing that the event, which gathered 100.000 visitors last year, has a huge potential and should be used for the development of the gastronomy tourism.
Similar events in big cities on the Danube, such as Vienna, Bratislava and Budapest, gather a much larger number of tourists, and Minister says that starting from the next year, that potential will be used even more.
“We’ll try to connect the Fish Fest to the Ship Carnival which starts in two days. We believe that is should be a public event with various contents, and with that we will have far more visitors”, says Mr Ljajić to the press.
In that respect, Mr Ljajić says that the time when such events take place must be aligned with the time of arrival of ships, big cruisers, and he underlines that only yesterday in Belgrade there were almost 400 ships with 50.000 passengers.
“It a huge potential”, says the Minister, stating that this is the reason why this event could become international in character, which is its basic goal, so the next year will be “crucial” in terms of attracting domestic and foreign tourists.
According to the words of Mr Ljajić, three fourths of about 900 events held in Serbia are gastronomic in character.
“Gastronomy is one of the biggest reasons of tourist travelling. Unfortunately, here it is still not the dominant reason, only five per cent of tourist say that food is the main reason for their arrival to Serbia, but also three fourths of them say that it is one of the reasons why they come to our country”, says Mr Ljajić.
Serbia, says the Minister, has a huge room to position itself even more and in the future we will work on branding of Serbia as a gastronomic destination.
During these four days of the festival, from Thursday until Sunday next to the Nebojša Tower, the visitors will have the chance to taste fish specialties, visit an old-timer exhibition, but also enjoy the rich variety of music programme, and the entrance is free.
The event is divided into four theme days, so that the first day is “Day of Sarajevo Cuisine”, the second is the “Day of Mediterranean Cuisine”, while the remaining two are organised in the form of chef competition.
As announced by the organisers the culinary skills will be demonstrated by many famous people and journalists, while on Sunday there will be a competition in preparing the fish broth, when the contestants will be the professionals. River and the Mediterranean fish specialties will be made by chefs from Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia and Montenegro.
