Sarajevo deserves a second look
"I didn't expect Sarajevo to be this great." That is what I posted on X after a Sunday there this month, together with a note to myself to come back. I went as a visitor, with no meetings booked. I came home with a market I had filed in the wrong drawer.
The default map
Most marketers I know carry an old map of the Balkans in their heads. Croatia means the coast, and the route goes around Bosnia and Herzegovina. That default is cheap to keep, because nobody on the team is asking to test it.
One day on foot tested mine.
One step, two cities
I started at the Eternal Flame and walked east along Ferhadija, a wide street of Austro-Hungarian facades and cafés. Where it meets Sarači, a small brass plate in the pavement reads "Sarajevo Meeting of Cultures". West of it, the city was built under Vienna. East of it, under the Ottomans. One step and the roofs drop, the lanes narrow and you are in Baščaršija, with the Sebilj fountain, the coppersmiths and the minarets.
In the centre I felt as if I were in Turkey, and I said so on X. The tea is served the way it is in Turkey, in a small glass with a sugar cube. The coffee is the special one. Bosnian coffee comes in a copper džezva with a small fildžan cup, and it is not a coffee you take to go. Then I crossed the Latin Bridge and stood at the corner where Franz Ferdinand was shot on 28 June 1914, a strange thing to do between a coffee and a cable car.
The cable car climbs from the old town up Trebević in about ten minutes. It was sunny, and the whole valley sat below me. Up top, a short walk leads to the bobsled track from the 1984 Winter Olympics, now covered in graffiti and popular with walkers and runners. I finished the day at the Yellow Bastion at sunset, looking down at the old town.
The culture is not a museum piece either. The Sarajevo Film Festival was started in 1995, towards the end of the siege, by the Obala Art Centar. Its 32nd edition ran in August this year.
What a marketer should take from the line
For me the brass plate is the lesson. The same city reads you in two codes at once, and a brand that speaks only to the Vienna side, or only to the Istanbul side, is talking to half the street. That is my reading, not a survey. The visitor data points the same way, though. In 2025 the top foreign markets by overnight stays in Bosnia and Herzegovina were Croatia (14.1%), Serbia (10.9%) and Turkey (9.7%), followed by Slovenia, Saudi Arabia, Germany, China, the US and Italy.
What the numbers say
The business case is steadier than most people assume, which is what you want from a market.
Bosnia and Herzegovina has been an EU candidate since December 2022, and in March 2024 the European Council decided to open accession negotiations. The convertible mark is fixed to the euro under a currency board at 1.95583 KM per euro, so pricing and budgeting in euros is simple. Foreign direct investment in 2025 was KM 1.41 billion, roughly €720 million, led by Germany, Serbia and Austria. The ICT sector has more than 1,100 companies and more than 12,000 employees, and IT services exports passed KM 800 million in 2025.
Euros to marks
Fixed rate: 1 euro = 1.95583 KM under a currency board.
| Euros | KM |
|---|---|
| €1.00 | 1.96 KM |
| €10.00 | 19.56 KM |
| €50.00 | 97.79 KM |
| €100.00 | 195.58 KM |
Halving the price in KM gets you close enough to the euro figure.
Access is moving faster than visitor numbers. Country-wide tourist arrivals were 1.96 million in 2025, up only 0.3%. Sarajevo airport handled a record 2.23 million passengers, up 22.2%, with Istanbul, Vienna and Zagreb as its busiest links. The two figures measure different things. My read is that the seats are arriving ahead of the demand, and that gap is exactly where an early marketer earns their keep.
If you go
These are the tips I would give a friend, from my own day. Start at the Eternal Flame and walk east, and look down at the Ferhadija and Sarači junction, because the plate is small and easy to miss. Order Bosnian coffee sitting down and give it half an hour. Carry some cash in marks for cafés and small shops; with the euro peg, halving the price in your head gets you close enough. Check the cable car's website before you go up Trebević, as it closes for maintenance some days, and leave time for the walk to the bobsled track. Wear proper shoes for the Yellow Bastion and get there before the sun drops. Cover shoulders and knees if you plan to step into a mosque.
I am going back. If you are planning a trip to Sarajevo or weighing Bosnia and Herzegovina as a market, message me on LinkedIn. I am happy to share my route and what I noticed.
Sources
- European Commission, Bosnia and Herzegovina
- CBBH, currency board FAQ
- CBBH, FDI 2025 (21 Aug 2026)
- Akta.ba, Digital Future Forum BiH 2026
- N1, tourism 2025 (9 Feb 2026)
- N1/FENA, Sarajevo airport 2025 (8 Jan 2026)
- Sarajevo Film Festival
- Destination Sarajevo, Trebević
- Sarajevo Meeting of Cultures
- Sarajevo Cable Car
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