Serbia Tries to Use Summer Music Fest to Recast Tourism Image
Skift Take
Serbia has plenty to offer, and for cheap, but few tourists realize it. If attendees of the Exit Festival continue to spread the word, that could change quickly.
When Serbia hosted the 14th annual Exit music festival this weekend, a record number of revelers turned out. In a medieval mountain fortress on the Danube river, 200,000 music fans fist-pumped to Snoop Dogg, David Guetta, and Fatboy Slim, celebrating Serbia's best party in over two decades.
They could just as well have been celebrating their own country's comeback; at the other side of the festival, that's exactly what their peers were planning. In a meeting hall in Novi Sad, hundreds of students, professionals, and foreign experts gathered to brainstorm about the rebranding of Serbia. They, along with their government and most of their countrymen, want to change its reputation to be more culture and nightlife, less war crimes and corruption.
The discussion in this serious pocket of a raucous festival was sponsored by Rebrand Serbia, an Exit-borne initiative that aims to pull Serbia out from its post-war rut, me
