Belgrade still needs about 10 luxurious hotelc for foreign and domestic guests

There are 187 standard and 22 garni hotels for businessmen, and if you add annexes to those there are 219 objects, 15.000 rooms and over 24.000 beds in the tourist offer.

Still, the main problem is not the number of Hotels, but their quality. Only four hotels and two garni hotels are categorized with 5 stars quality. 16 hotels and four garni hotels have been categorized with 4 stars quality – that makes just about 12% of the entire capacity.

The Tourism ministry says that they are working on the categorization with great care. They point out that the rule – book is very precise and large, and it has become recommendation from all international association and that it is done by the world standards.

( The last hotel with 5 stars quality in Belgrade was built 17 years ago: Hyatt Regency)

The picture of Hotels in Serbia should improve because of the privatization, which brings new owners and new investment, but the first effects are yet to show.

(Hotel President, Kovilovo)

About 80 Hotels got their new owners by now and 56 more are waiting to go through the process of privatization. It is almost a rule that when a strategic partner, who worked with hotels earlier, shows up in the role of the buyer he renovates the hotel and tries to get a better categorization.

The second possibility for improving the structure of hotels is building new ones. That is why the National investment plan gives means to companies who renovate the existing objects in order to get a better categorization. Throughout the financing of the infrastructure better conditions for equipting tourist locations are creating in order to attract new investors.

(Hotel Zlatnik, Zemun)

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The procedure of giving a category is not complicated, but the criteria are very high. A commission made out of three members includes: a representative from the Tourism ministry, an expert from that area and an architect. The commission values if all the required conditions have been fulfilled and gives points to the choice elements.

This means that a 5 stars quality hotel should have: parking spaces for the majority of guests (80% of the rooms), lifts for guests only, staff, food, rooms for people with special needs, climatisation for all rooms, bank stands for exchanging money a for the paying cards of old banks.

Beside that, there is rule for the size of rooms and beds, equipment in the bathroom, the number of suits and condition which the kitchen has to fulfill..

The choice elements are up to the hotel, regarding the needs of their guests. They could bring in sport courts, wellness centers, playgrounds, saunas, polls. When a hotel collets enough points for the categorization , it must bring all that up in the offer.