Tourism generates 12.3% of Slovenia's GDP, and provides 12% of the country's jobs, including indirectly, head of the Slovenian Tourism Board (STO) Maja Pak said at the outset of the two-day meeting. Noting that visitor numbers were up 7% and the inflow from tourism rose by 8% in the first ten months of the year, she said that "the results in Slovenian tourism are good, but it is necessary to make sure they stay so and get even better in the future".
She believes the untapped potential lies in creating even more attractive, sustainability-based products with higher value added, even more intense and coordinated promotion, better accessibility of Slovenia, better conditions for investment and work in tourism and more efficient departmental coordination. In a bid to secure all that, a declaration on partnership for sustainable development of Slovenian tourism will be signed on Friday as part of the annual gathering of everyone involved in the industry.
The STO director said that global trends in tourism follow an increasing demand for products related to health, feeling well and outdoor activities. The partners defined key competitive advantages of Slovenian tourism, key tourism products and target groups, based on which they set main guidelines in the marketing of Slovenian tourism for the next five years. These include increasing Slovenia's recognisability on key markets and developing new markets, clear tourism product placement, efficient e-marketing and increasing the scope of promotion activities coordinated through partnership. Isabel Garana, the regional director for Europe at the World Tourism Organization, presented a document called Tourism towards 2030, which projects that international tourism arrivals will grow to reach 1.8 billion tourists by 2030.
SOURCE: The Slovenia Times
