Part of Budva Riviera to be privatized?

The Budva Riviera is most probably to be split into two sections. The town-hotel of Sveti Stefan and Villa Milocer will remain state-owned, as will the old Budva town hotel, probably, whereas the tourist settlement Slovenska Plaza and the hotels in Petrovac, including the remarkably valuable surrounding land, might become the ownership of Neil Emilfarb and Miodrag Kostic.

The division will be a prelude to the planned and announced privatization of the biggest hotel company in Montenegro, the majority owner of which is the state. Although not officially confirmed, it is almost certain that Slovenska Plaza and the Aleksandar hotel in Budva, as well as Palas and Castellastva in Petrovac, will be privatized. There have been speculations that the old town hotel Mogren, located across from the ancient Budva, might remain state-owned, as might the elite town-hotel Sveti Stefan and Villa Milocer, former summer resort of the Karadjordjevic dynasty.

The state has a 58.7% stake in the Budva Riviera Hotel Group for now. The second biggest shareholder is the Stratex Group, owned by Neil Emilfarb, an American of Uzbek origin and one of the owners of a part of the tourist-residential settlement on the Zavala cape near Budva. The public is speculating about whether Emilfarb and Kostic, who now own 30% of the Budva Riviera HG, are to become majority owners in the new privatized company and owners of hotels and attractive, extremely valuable property accompanying the said hotels in Budva and Petrovac with investments of EUR 17 million. Neither Stratex nor the Budva Riviera have said anything regarding this, although it has been publicly alleged many times, without being denied, that the Government intends to privatize the Budva hotel owner, which has the capacities of around 4,000 hotel beds, in a specific way this year.