REBEC 2025: Are Belgrade’s hoteliers ready for EXPO?

The Expo 2027 special exhibition is practically “just around the corner,” and one of the main issues plaguing Belgrade is the accommodation of participants and visitors to this world event that our capital will host. Although accommodation facilities are already being built in Surcin, the Serbian capital must be ready to accommodate between three and four million people in those three months. Therefore, one of the topics at this year’s REBEC conference was Belgrade’s potential for Expo 2027.

As the participants on this panel said, the biggest problem is (expectedly) - the workforce.

According to Andrej Sovrovic, member of the Board of Directors of Delta Holding and CEO of Delta Hospitality, due to current events, four to five months of lower occupancy rates have already been recorded compared to last year.

– During these five months, there has been stress, pressure and this is affecting employees. We have only just started to consolidate, to focus on education and returning data to the industry. If we continue to work under this kind of pressure, it will be extremely difficult in the coming years – said Sovrovic. – However, if we now start reducing the volume of business, laying off people or making other sharp cuts, next year we will start all over again - preparing for 2027, new employment, salary increases... and then, in November 2027, we will again reminisce about how it was. This is not sustainable. For me, the essence is in prosperity and a sustainable approach.

Aleksandar Vasiljevic, General Manager of the Hotel Hilton, believes that currently everyone lacks a sustainable strategy - in business, workforce planning and organization.

– For example, through state subsidies, some hotels can operate until January 1, 2027, but this means that they will have about 320 employees per hotel, which is a total of about 1,000 people who will not contribute to Expo. So, the main question becomes - what will we do with the workforce in 2027? – Vasiljevic wonders.

He stressed the need for serious preparation for the Expo: from signalization, to the organization of the city’s functioning, to the entire infrastructure. – At the moment, it seems that no one is dealing with the broader context of the city’s development, but everyone is only looking at their own development related to the Expo – Vasiljevic assessed.

Speaking about employment and the current state of the workforce, he pointed out that “as soon as someone sends an application, I call after five minutes.”

– However, 50% of candidates do not show up for interviews, and of those who do show up, a quarter do not come on the first working day, because in the meantime they have found something else or “a neighbor invited them.” This is the reality of this market. We currently have 45 foreign workers and I am satisfied with these workers from Kenya, Egypt, Nepal and the Philippines. I am “pushing” them to the “front line,” not only to be in the background. They require daily care and communication, but they work. We have made a decision to no longer accept blackmail from the domestic workforce – Vasiljevic states.

Sovrovic assesses that the situation with workers now seems more positive:

– We have been working on stabilization for the past three years. Our hotels in Belgrade now have the largest number of employees, we are stable in terms of domestic labor. Despite the opening of the St. Regis and Bristol hotels, we have managed to maintain balance. We realized that we should not make decisions based on the business of the last few months, no matter what they were. Salaries have increased, but not drastically. We have learned more about our employees and realized that salary is important, but it is not everything.

Regarding employee turnover, he added that, if we looked at the entire number of employees, it was around 50%, but that for those who had been in the same hotel for a year or more - it was extremely low, around 10%.

The third panelist, Alastair George Laird, General Manager of the renovated Hotel Bristol in Belgrade, also spoke on this topic:

– Opening a hotel with 140 new employees was not easy. The labor market in Belgrade is competitive, as it is everywhere in the world. I have been a hotel manager in Prague and Dublin and everywhere it’s the same story: “Nobody wants to work, everything has changed.” Still, we have succeeded. Bristol is a symbol of Serbian culture, and it was important to me to hire as many local people as possible. We managed to do it in just three months. You have to compete for talent, offer the best benefits. We have formed partnerships with hotels in Croatia, so if someone goes there, they go to our hotel there. We have made exchanges, hoping that people will come back. For the next season we hope that there will be an option for them to stay here, and in the summer too, because it’s worth the risk.

He also pointed out that Belgrade had one big plus in terms of tourism, the fact that people are warm and hospitable, but added that the problem was that many outside Serbia did not know this.

When asked what the Expo would bring to the domestic hotel industry, Vasiljevic first said that tourism was declining at that moment, and that occupancy in hotels was down by 6%, and in the apartment rental sector by as much as 20%.

– That’s why we must already look at what will happen after 2027, because life will continue. Of course, Expo 2027 is a huge opportunity, but not just as a 90-day event, but as a platform for long-term development. Sava Centar is key in this - its effects will last for decades. Thanks to concrete tourism, we can be competitive with cities like Prague and Budapest, and not just regional destinations.

Sovrovic went on to say that we had an increase in the number of guests from Turkey, the Czech Republic, and Russia, but that the problem was that “we don’t know who we are targeting at all,” and whether we were just a destination for “cheap kebabs and brandy.”

– We have more and more luxury hotels, but we don’t have a clear strategy for what we want to be as a destination – he said.

Vasiljevic agreed that the luxury segment had not yet been developed, but that work could be done on the “premium” segment.

– Moreover, restaurants are no longer cheap, so it is no longer realistic to talk about “cheap brandy and kebabs” – added Vasiljevic.

Sovrovic underlined that good management decisions required data, which, as he states, is currently lacking.

– Statistics are confusing, we do not know who the real guests are, who the residents are, who the tourists are – he said and cited the example of Russians, for whom statistics indicate that there are the most of them in Belgrade, but it does not state whether they are Russians who have settled here or tourists.

Laird, on the other hand, believes that Belgrade also has potential in the luxury segment, but that the problem is the image that the city has.

– People ask “Is it safe?”, which actually means that they do not know anything about Belgrade. And that is an opportunity for us to change the perception. There is good food, music, we have a product, an offer and I am optimistic. Expo with the theme “Play for Humanity”, as a combination of sports and music, is perfect for this country. You have legends in both segments and this is an ideal opportunity for positioning. We need to figure out how to combine business and pleasure and offer experiences that people will want to share – Laird believes.

He also touched on the downsides of the domestic hotel industry, stating that if he could change one thing, it would be the HoReCa industry:

– Definitely the supply chain. Luxury goods, quality meat, fish, flowers, imports, all of that is a problem.

– And, of course, another quality laundromat wouldn’t hurt – Vasiljevic continued jokingly.

Sovrovic concluded the topic by saying that it was important for all stakeholders to believe in this industry:

– The key is in the people who lead and in those who come after them. Our future depends on those who will know how to motivate, inspire and convey the love for this business.

B. P.

Delta Holding d.o.o. Beograd

Delta hospitality doo Novi Beograd

Beograd na vodi d.o.o. Beograd

Hilton Beograd

Delta Holding

Delta hotels

Delta Hospitality

hotel Bristol

Aleksandar Vasiljević

Andrej Sovrović

Alastair George Laird

Expo 2027

Belgrade hotels

employment

workers

capacities