At the 25th Kopaonik Business Forum the Assistant Minister for Tourism Renata Pindžo has presented the planned reform of Serbian tourism which goal is to modernise and introduce digital technologies for boosting the fight against grey economy and measuring the actual impact of tourism on GDP and economic growth of Serbian economy.
During the panel on the topic “Hospitality and economic sustainability in digital environment”, Mrs Pindžo has stressed that the line Ministry has very ambitious plans when it comes to the improvement of the competitiveness of Serbia as a touristic destination, and application of new technologies in developing tourism.
“In the next period we will amend the Law on Tourism, and the key measures we propose are the changes of the tax treatment of natural persons who provide accommodation services, introduction of lump-sum taxation based on available accommodation capacities based on the proper low rate in order to expand the base of those who are taxed”; says the Assistant Minister.
She has made a particular emphasis of the information system named W- Tourist, a single online system which ensures a daily insight into the condition of the touristic turnover, updated database on accommodation facilities and accommodation service providers, reporting for the statistical and marketing purposes in the real time and a better control of collection of residence fees with the aim to incur higher income in the sector of tourism.
Mrs Pindžo has spoken about the new Regulation intended for encouraging the improvement of organised touristic turnover of foreign tourists to the territory of the Republic of Serbia. She has stressed that we are now on a milestone. “We want to show our travel agencies that they have our support, that we understand their problems and that only together can we reach better results.”
She concluded that Serbia must be included in the regional tours since that is our chance when it comes to Chinese and other distance markets and these incentives particularly have a positive impact on domestic agencies entering into partnerships with big tour operators.
