Nautical tourism is one of the fastest growing tourism segments on the Montenegrin part of the Adriatic coast. In the past ten years, the number and size of reception capacities in Montenegrin nautical tourism has increased by more than twice. The construction of three marinas with over 500 berths is under way, expected to be on the market by the end of 2019. The development of this tourism segment has been more the result of individual investment projects, than an outcome of strategic development processes. There has been no destination support to the development, and staff needed for new product introduction and positioning have not been trained. According to current development plans, the formation of nautical tourist offer on the Montenegrin coast in nautical tourism ports and related activities of charter companies and service centers are expected to provide over 1000 jobs. The aim of this paper is to analyze the current situation and planned activities within Montenegrin nautical tourist offer and consider the current staff training programmes for the needs of the respective development, with reference to experiences of the most developed destinations, to provide guidelines and recommendations aimed at creating appropriate staff support as the basis for the future comparative advantage of Montenegro on the international nautical tourism market. The paper will rely on general methodological principles applied to the specific research subject. The main scientific research methods to be used in the paper are: inductive-deductive, analytical, synthetic, and statistical methods.

This paper examined ten main components of a nautical destination and the level of satisfaction with them by the nautical tourists visiting Montenegro. The goal is to propose the strategic management directions for sustainable development of Montenegro as an attractive, new Adriatic and Mediterranean nautical destination. A sample of 609 nautical tourists was examined on different dimensions of Montenegro as a destination; their obtained responses used exploratory factor analysis. All categories of respondents expressed the greatest level of satisfaction with the natural beauties of Montenegro, while being least satisfied with the nature protection. Given that strategic decision-makers are still in the process of considering the options for the development of the researched destination, and that foreign investors have recognised its attractiveness, this paper aims to offer to all stakeholders—the central government, local self-governments, investors, managers and tourism organisations—a framework for sustainable nautical destination management. The survey focuses on satisfaction defined quite broadly, since the aim is to gain an insight into crucial elements threatening the destination’s sustainability to be able, in the next steps, to examine the specificities of the problems detected. An added value is the applicability to similar nautical destinations, which very much like Montenegro, invest considerable efforts in boosting the development of this segment of tourism supply.