Breakout Role: Here’s Why You Should Visit Montenegro Now

Never thought of visiting Montenegro? Well, you might be soon. In our “Breakout Role” series, we take a look at places that have seen huge increases in tourism in the last few years, and try to figure out what’s causing all the hype.

Montenegro’s beauty can be credited to the fact that its nature has largely been preserved. Located in Southeast Europe’s Western Balkan Peninsula, the country is only 5,333 square miles in total area—about the size of Connecticut—but its landscape is dominated by relatively unscathed scenery, including five national parks and three UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

“There are not many countries as beautiful as Montenegro,” says Mladen Lalatovic, founder and operator of M Tours, a private tour company based in Montenegro. “You could go rafting, and then drink the water from the river. It’s really untouched, well-preserved nature.”

Over the past decade, this natural purity has been challenged, as Montenegro’s number of yearly visitors more than tripled since 2006. The country saw 1,350,000 visitors in 2014 alone, which is twice as many tourists as there are permanent residents in the small Adriatic nation.

Lights

Photo: stalkERR, CC-BY

The beginnings of Montenegro’s tourism boom can be traced back to 2006, when the country voted to break off from Serbia, forming its own autonomous republic. The following year, the number of total yearly visitors skyrocketed, and has been rising steadily ever since.

The earliest tourists, according to Lalatovic, were beach-goers from Russia, Ukraine and other Eastern European nations looking to enjoy the fair prices and sunshine of the Adriatic coast. While this trend seems to still hold true, in recent years direct flights from Western European cities have made Montenegro more accessible to travelers from around the world, many of whom come for national parks and adventure tourism, not beaches and warm weather.

“For the Western travelers, it would be way more interesting to do certain types of biking and hiking through Montenegro,” Lalatovic says.