Challenges and Opportunities for Development of Sustainable Tourism in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The tourism industry is complex and hyper-dynamic, comprised of a highly fragmented value chain. It encompasses travel organizers, accommodation providers, tourist offices, visitor attractions, transport activities, and a litany of other support systems and direct and tertiary mechanisms for each of them. Sustainable initiatives across this chain moreover are becoming increasingly important, while competition intensifies, and consumer-tourists – now digitally connected and savvy – also are more demanding. These realities potentially help and hinder a country’s tourism industry, and the broader marketing system that both enables and benefits from it. Conventional wisdom commonly holds tourism and its related activities positively impact social and economic well-being. Therefore government leaders – in cities, cantons, regions, and countries -- businesspersons, NGOs and consumer-stakeholders would be well served to understand the hyper-dynamic macromarketing milieu that, part and parcel, is the tourism industry. This would seem to be particularly true in countries with numerous touristic assets, but perhaps still suffer or are beleaguered by socio-economic challenges that prove difficult to overcome, and might in fact be ameliorated by tourism development. Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) would seem to be one of these countries, and thus is the focus of this research. More specifically, the purpose of this active study, in which data continue to be collected, is to identify the most pressing challenges and compelling touristic assets, posit sustainable competitive advantages, consider complementary and cooperative initiatives within BiH and among its neighboring countries and investor countries, and then discuss some solutions for tourism stakeholders, which could lead to sustainable tourism development, improved competitiveness and greater development and well-being of the state/country as a whole. To date, the research team has examined extant data and monitors data-trends; in 2013 members of the team began multi-method field research across BiH, with special emphasis on regions generally regarded to have the most or best tourism potential vis-à-vis desirable tourist-segments. Initial findings lead to hope, frustration, and again hope -- at least for those