Significant investments finally coming to Croatian tourism industry?
According to data from the Ernst&Young consultancy, the investment momentum in Croatian hotels should amount to at least 1.2 billion euro (8.8 billion kuna) by 2022. The origin of major investors will be significantly changed in the next five years, with more investments coming from Asian markets, reports Novac.hr on May 28, 2018.
The data comes from the survey “Investments in Hotel Projects from 2018 to 2022” prepared by Marija Noršić from Ernst&Young’s Tourism Department, who reviewed the investment activities of the hoteliers in the next five year on the basis of available data.
Much of the investments refers to already announced hotel projects – such as Kupari, Brizenica Bay, the Park Hotel in Rovinj, and Valamar's investments in Rabac, but the list does include some unannounced investments.
For example, the study reveals that Jako Andabak, in addition to already known investments, plans to invest 45 million euro in the Borak Hotel on Brač and that the reconstructed hotel will open in 2020. Laguna Novigrad intends to spend 15 million euro on the construction of an entirely new hotel in Novigrad with about 200 rooms.
The list also contains a large number of currently anonymous investors who are not yet ready to reveal too many details. For example, an unnamed investor will invest 15 million euro in the construction of a new 65-room hotel at the Bačvice neighbourhood in Split. A new 100-room hotel will be built in Zadar, and the island of Krk will get two new smaller hotels by 2022, with a total investment of 22 million euro.
Data reveal that most of the announced investments will take place in 2018 (42 out of 83 projects), but Noršić explains that this does not mean that there will be a slowdown in investment in the following years. “The number of projects that may be current in the period from 2020 to 2022 is far greater, but due to the complexity of each individual project and the large range of potential value of each investment, it is not possible to assess the value of all active projects in the period. The figure mentioned above of more than 1.2 billion euro includes just those investors who were willing to share their plans. It would be wrong to think that there will be a slowdown in the growth of the market due to the smaller number of announced projects in the second part of the five-year period. The investors were not ready to announce development plans for projects which have not yet found their sources of funding,” notes Noršić.
The research reveals that, by 2022, Croatia will have available 6,000 completely new hotel rooms, as well as 3,700 renovated rooms.
Noršić estimates that these projects will significantly change the origin of most substantial investments in Croatia since as much as 42 percent of the planned investments will be made by Asian companies. However, it should be noted that the group also includes investors from Russia and Turkey. “We have included investors from Turkey and Russia in the Asia group because most of those countries’ territories belong to Asia,” explains Noršić.
Translated from Novac.hr (reported by Dora Koretić).
