Montenegro's Sv. Stefan Faces Winter in the Dark

27 Oct 2010 / 09:10

It appears that Montenegro's once illustrious resort island of St. Stefan in the Adriatic Sea will spend another winter in darkness, off limits to the wealthy holidaymakers that the island boasted in the prosperous 1970s and 1980s.
Jovo Martinovic
The long awaited renovation and upgrade of the main island resort has dragged into its fourth year with still no sign of completion. The Singapore-based investor Aman Resorts has failed to meet several deadlines for the opening of the resort hotel.

The delays have exacerbated fears that the St. Stefan resort may suffer the same fate as other hotels on Montenegro's coast that changed hands to foreign, mainly Russian, investors and then lay closed and abandoned- what many see as the legacy of the speedy and murky post communist transition in the country.

The investor from Singapore has indeed been working to bring the resort back to its former glory, albeit slowly, and it claims that it has committed EUR 46 million to the project so far, much more than initially pledged EUR 20 million according to the lease contract signed in 2006 with the government of Montenegro.

Aman Resorts held a partial opening of the island last summer amidst ongoing works on the many still to be refurbished and upgraded villas.

The opening was seen as an attempt to appease angry locals and critics enraged by the delays and the damage they say the tourism industry has suffered as a result.

“Everyone suffers damage, both the state and those who rent apartments in summer. It’s hard to calculate how much we all have lost so far. To have St. Stefan closed in Montenegro is like having the Eiffel Tower closed in Paris or St. Peter’s and the Colosseum in Rome," said Vladimir Mitrovic, former head manager of the resort in the 1970s.

The government is reticent to disclose the losses incurred due to Aman’s delays but says it is confident that the resort's positive effects will far outweigh the negative given the amount of investment already poured in and pledges for more to come.

The crisis stricken Aman recently applied for a EUR 38 million loan with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to bring the works on the island to completion.

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