FOREIGN CITIZENS TO BE ELIGIBLE FOR TOURISM VOUCHERS IN REPUBLIKA SRPSKA

The Government of Republika Srpska has adopted the Draft Law on Tourism during its 10th session, aiming to regulate the planning and development of tourism across the entity, as well as the rights and obligations of tourism stakeholders, conditions for conducting tourism activities, tourism services, promotion and enhancement of tourism, incentives, records, and administrative supervision.

The existing Law on Tourism, adopted in 2017 and amended in 2023, represented a major step forward compared to previous regulations from 2011 and 2013, introducing modernization and better alignment with contemporary trends in the tourism industry.

When drafting the new text, the Ministry of Trade and Tourism focused on the need to comprehensively and precisely regulate the field of travel agencies, expand the range of users eligible for tourism vouchers to include foreign citizens, and achieve the strategic tourism goals defined in the Tourism Development Strategy and other planning documents, the Government said in a statement.

“The aim of the Draft Law is to incorporate and consolidate all previous provisions that have proven effective and useful in practice. This means that the solutions which have worked well will not be abandoned, but rather integrated into the new legal structure. In this way, continuity in positive practices is ensured and unnecessary experimentation with already proven models is avoided,” the Government of Republika Srpska stated.

The analysis of the existing legal framework also identified certain shortcomings that have hindered further tourism development or created legal uncertainty.

“The Draft Law addresses these issues by introducing new solutions and tightening regulations in several key areas — including the operation of tourism activities by associations and organizations, clearer definitions of intermediaries in package tour contracts, the introduction of electronic sales of tourist packages, and establishing conditions for obtaining professional qualifications for tourist guides specialized in rafting or as skippers,” the statement concluded.

Would you like me to make this sound more like a news portal article (shorter, more dynamic, with quotes and subheadings), or keep it in this formal government-reporting tone?