One might wonder: what is the purpose of another conference? It is true that in the past decade we have been witnessing or participating in numerous scientific gatherings dedicated to various aspects of tourism. One of the results of these gatherings of academic and professional public is a number of papers. Some of these are theoretical, others are qualitative and quantitative research, while some are case studies- and all of these have widened our knowledge about the phenomenon that has such a great influence on today`s world. Some of these works have brought inspirational ideas or have revealed new horizons, showing different standpoints, some contain serious scientific polemics or even criticism.

Is this not the right moment to overview all this in order to see how far we have come in studying tourism, whether some claims are grounded or not and whether scientific deduction has influenced real life. Of course, we should reconsider all that has not stood the test of time, and ask ourselves if we had been, at least in some cases, too optimistic.

This is the reason why we named the new Conference: CONTEMPORARY TOURISM- WISHES AND OPPORTUNITIES. This topic enables us to look back for a moment in order to reconsider or reconfirm some of the existing concepts, paradigms, ideas and forecasts, while in the same time we can think about the future, as it is expected from academic public.

Tourism is a wide field of study, and the fact that this Conference offers a few subtopics does not imply that the papers from other fields are not welcome- just the opposite.

On behalf of the organizer of the Conference, the College of Tourism in Belgrade- one of the oldest educational institutions in the field of tourism in this part of Europe that is celebrating its 45th anniversary, it is my pleasure and honour to invite you to take part in the First Belgrade International Conference On Tourism, from 22nd to 24th March 2012.

Welcome to Belgrade!

Milan Skakun, PhD
Headmaster of College of Tourism, Belgrade, Serbia