Minister Memic: Foreign platforms operate illegally here, we were thinking about shutting down booking.com

Photo: II.studio / Shutterstock.com

Minister of Tourism Husein Memic said today that in tourism, which is constantly developing and bringing an ever-increasing hard currency revenue, grey economy is present to a considerable degree, and that the biggest problem are people who use private accommodation and foreign platforms that work illegally in our country.

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Memic told a meeting of the Coordinating Body of the Government of Serbia for Suppression of Grey Economy that in the last two months, about 7,000 inspections were carried out, which is a significant improvement compared to the previous period, but that it is difficult to achieve results primarily because of illegal advertising of foreign platforms that operate illegally in Serbia.

"We had conversations with booking.com, which has an office in Croatia, they came here and we made some suggestions on how things should be done. We also talked about it with other foreign companies, we even thought that the solution was to shut down booking.com (in Serbia), as some countries have already done, but experts told us that it is impossible because they will always find a channel to reach our citizens," he said.

Memic added that a letter will be sent to the European Commission regarding this and that he hopes that it will be possible to bring them to the table and talk.

(Telegraf.rs/Tanjug)