TERRITORIAL EXPANSION OF HOTEL CHAINS IN COUNTRIES OF SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE

The paper discusses the market of Serbia and neighboring nine countries: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece. The aim is to present a comparison with the number of hotel chains, brands and facilities in the surveyed countries in South-eastern Europe. While Serbia, Slovenia, Macedonia and Romania almost exclusively attractive as the continental areas, countries such as Greece, Croatia, Bulgaria and Montenegro are popular mass bathing tourism destinations. This fact directly indicates the types of international hotel facilities (in first case there are city and conference types and in the other case there are resorts). The results show that a total of 21 international hotel chains are operating in the observed region, with the dominance of the markets of Bulgaria, Greece and Romania. Among them, Bulgaria has the largest number of individual hotel chains (11 chains), but Greece prevails when it comes to international hotel brands (19 brands) and individual objects (71 facilities). On the other side, the Serbian market has relatively modest offer with a total of seven hotel chains and eight brands, while the number of individual objects are significantly lower of the region maximum (only 13 objects). Based on the above, the observed countries are relatively new and potentially important macro market for future investments in hotel facilities.