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Mrs Barbara Guncar, General Manager of Slovenia Tourist Board, analyzes in TravelDailyNews the efforts of the tourist board to inform the global village about Slovenia.
TravelDailyNews: Slovenia is going to be present in many international fairs this year. What are your expectations?
Barbara Guncar: We would like to promote Slovenia as a friendly and safe country, as a modern country with tradition. We promote our national parks because they are in great importance to us and they cover a huge percentage of our country (50%). Also, we would like to have more golf courses and we are trying to create the opportunities for that in our country. We had joined European Union in 2004 and since then we have orientated our tourism promotion with a more European perspective.
European market is very important for us and we try to attract tourists from the European region but now we want to establish Slovenia as a more international destination. We had many problems of reaching the number of tourists that we wanted in our country because of the inadequate direct air connections. We already have two low cost carries which help in that direction and we give more attention to form those policies which will help us to be directly connected with more destinations globally.
TDN: Do you feel that there is competition with the other neighbor countries?
B.G.: We don’t feel them like competitors because we are very different. We promote our own brand which offers a completely different tourism product. We have the advantage that we are a small country and someone can taste and feel all aspects of Slovenia. Another advantage is that we are very close to our neighbor countries and it is easy for tourists to come and visit our country from those regions. One problem is that there is a lot of confusion with Slovakia. We have witnessed that many think that Slovenia is Slovakia and that causes many problems to us. But we are working to create a more clear definition of what we are and we do.
TDN: World Tourism Organization promotes the issues of sustainable tourism and poverty alleviation worldwide. What are your efforts regarding these policies?
B.G.: We are having a very good cooperation with World Tourism Organization to this direction. Last year Frangesco Friangialli, General Secretary of UNWTO had visited Slovenia and we discussed about this initiative of the UNWTO. Slovenia Tourism Board fully supports that concept and we are trying to maintain a steady policy in that direction. As far as poverty is concerned we don’t have such an issue in our country but we give our undivided support and help to minimize poverty not only in the region but in the world as well.
TDN: What is your European market shares regarding business travel?
B.G.: We are trying to create the infrastructure basis in order to attract more business travelers in our country. We believe that it is a strong market and many sectors in Slovenia’s tourism industry are developing that concept. We have business travelers from all the regions of the world and especially from Europe. Europe is a big market and we have many Europeans who come for business in Slovenia. This year we are trying to promote also medical tourism in order to increase our share in this field. We have many business travelers from Germany but England appears to be stronger the last two years.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
