Montenegro has launched a James Bond-themed digital campaign alongside continued marketing with UK airline partners to draw in more UK visitors next year.
In the first eight months of this year, 80,000 UK visitors have travelled to the destination, compared with 89,000 UK arrivals for the whole of 2023, which was an 18% increase on 2022.
Ana Tripković Marković, director of the Montenegro National Tourism Organisation, credited the increase in air links between the UK and Montenegro for the continued rise in visitor numbers and said the figures suggested UK arrivals this year would top 2023.
“We will probably be above last year,” she said, adding: “We are more than happy with these figures because we have been working so hard to improve aircraft connectivity. We now have four different airlines flying to Montenegro from London, Birmingham, and Bristol. That has made a huge difference.”
The James Bond-themed campaign launched this week, on the first day of World Travel Market, and is running across digital channels including You Tube and Instagram. It will continue until the start of the summer season next year and aims to raise general awareness of Montenegro.
It includes a short film with the tagline Uncover Your Wild Side in which random people receive a call from ‘M’ and are tasked with a mission to find the ‘golden tiles’. This refers to gold ceiling tiles in the Peter II Petrovic-Njegos Mausoleum building in Lovcen national park, one of the destination’s most popular tourist attractions.
The tourist board said it has also signed up to continue joint direct marketing campaigns with airlines such as Jet2 for next year, which will include outdoor as well as online and radio advertising.
“We want to keep this trend [of increasing visitor numbers],” added Tripković Marković, who said the tourist board was keen to host more travel agents and trade events such as Abta’s Travel Convention.
“We are trying to get more travel agents to come here,” she said, adding that the main message for agents to tell clients was about the destination’s diversity. It offers a different climate, landscape, culture and cuisine depending on where visitors go.
“You can swim and ski in different parts of Montenegro on the same day. In the west there is a Mediterranean cuisine and climate and in the north there’s an alpine climate,” she said.
The west coast region is the most popular for UK tourists, with flights into Tivat, and where most of the large brand hotels and luxury resorts are based.