As Barbara Ban/Novac writes on the 27th of January, 2020, Pula's Arena Hospitality Group hotelier from is investing as much as 363 million kuna in its portfolio in southern Istria this year.

The largest investment, of about 245 million kuna, is the one in Pula's Hotel Brioni on Verudela, which has been expected for many years, and will last two years, then they'll invest in a nearby apartment complex called Arena Verudela Beach and the Medulin campsite Arena Grand Kažela.

The complete renovation and repositioning of the popular Brioni Hotel began this year. The opening of the newly renovated hotel is planned for the summer season of 2021, and the facility will be closed throughout this year. The hotel was built back in the early 1970s and was one of the most popular in the former Yugoslavia. Many celebrities of the time stayed there. The seven-storey hotel will remodel its rooms and other facilities such as meeting and conference rooms. It will also boast an indoor pool, a wellness centre with saunas and relaxation rooms, a fitness centre and an outdoor infinity pool with its own sunbathing area.

After the complete renovation, it will be a contemporary luxury hotel with 227 rooms and suites and the ambition to become the mainstay of the Arena Hospitality Group's hotel business, a statement from the company said.

Several restaurants and bars at the hotel will offer their guests a varied gastronomic offer ranging from local, Mediterranean cuisine to international specialities from around the world. After the investment, the hotel will be branded a world-renowned high quality hotel brand, the Arena Hospitality Group added.

Not far from the Brioni Hotel in the Verudela area, the renovation of the Arena Verudela Beach apartment complex, worth a massive 68 million kuna, will continue. Last year, ten accommodation units were renovated, and this year, the remaining 146 apartment units are to be renovated too.

''These modernly furnished and fully equipped apartments for four to six people will be categorised with four stars. In addition to the accommodation units, the Lighthouse restaurant, located on the beach in front of the resort itself, will be completely renovated, and thus the quality of the entire tourist product will be. A complete renovation of the Yacht restaurant underneath the Park Plaza Histria Hotel is underway, in which public spaces and rooms are being renovated,'' the Arena Hospitality Group from Pula said.

This year, they will also invest 50 million kuna into the Medulin camp Kažela, with a total of 150 million kuna already invested in this area last year. This is the second phase of the investment which will turn it into a modern and high-quality four-star category camping facility.

This year's works include the further replacement of mobile homes and the installation of 45 new luxury camping homes. For owners of modern campers, luxury, spacious lots will be adapted to the best, "premium" positions by the sea. These are large parcels of land larger than 150 square metres, offering complete infrastructure - electricity, water and drainage. As part of the investment, all the sanitary facilities intended for guests of the camping pitches will be renovated, which will increase its competitiveness among other campsites, the company said.

In addition, the restaurant, bar and sports centre with the proper horticultural landscaping of public areas will be completely renovated. Throughout the camp, guests will have high-speed wireless Internet access and IPTV services (TV channels through new OTT technology) via smart TVs in camping homes.

It's worth noting that last year, the Arena Hospitality Group invested more than 250 million kuna in its tourism portfolio. With this year's investments, the Arena Hospitality Group will almost completely rebuild its facilities at Verudela and bring them up to an impressive four-star level.

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As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 26th of April, 2019, through its subsidiary Sugarhill Investments B.V., the Croatian hotel group Arena Hospitality Group d.d. from Pula has concluded a framework agreement with MK Aviation Services d.o.o. to take over the "88 Rooms" hotel, a four star hotel in Belgrade, Serbia.

The completion of this transaction is of course still subject to certain steps and to the fulfillment of certain conditions, as they have stated from the aforementioned Croatian company.

"88 Rooms" is a modern, four-star hotel situated in a prime location on Takovska Street in Belgrade, close to the business district and close to the cultural attractions of the old part of Belgrade, including Knez Mihailova Street and Kalemegdan Park. The hotel boasts 88 modern and comfortable rooms and suites decorated according to Feng Shui rules, and other facilities include a bar, a restaurant, a fitness room, a massage room and four meeting rooms with a capacity of up to 200 participants.

With this acquisition, Pula's Arena Hospitality Group continues to expand overseas following its already established business model with the management of seven international hotels in Germany and Hungary, more specifically in Berlin, Nuremberg, Cologne and Budapest.

On this occasion, the CEO of Arena Hospitality Group d.d., Reuel Slonim, said: "It's a great pleasure to be able to present this acquisition, which, with the momentum of our current investments in our existing accommodation facilities, continues our [already] announced further expansion of our business to new areas in the major cities of the region of Central and Eastern Europe. By entering this new market and strengthening our hotel portfolio throughout the year, we're able to add more worth to the group's value and at the same time create additional long-term value for our customers and for our shareholders. With such moves, we're rapidly changing the existing high seasonality of business and we're growing into a dynamic, international hotel group with year-round business.''

The Arena Hospitality Group expects that the conditions required for completing the transaction will be met by the end of this year, after which, Belgrade's 88 Rooms Hotel will become part of the Arena Hospitality Group famiily and continue its business under the brand name "Arena Hotels & Apartments" under the new name of "Arena Hotel 88" .

The value of the transaction stands at 47 million kuna, which, together with the entire investment cycle, started after a public offer in mid-2017 exceeding a hefty price tag of 500 million kuna.

Slonim continued: "More than half a billion kuna's worth of investment after the public offer is underway, starting with an investment of 70 million kuna in the first Croatian luxury glamorous resort Arena One 99 Glamping in Pomer, the current investment of 128 million kuna in the Arena Kažela camp in Medulin, 53 million kuna in the reconstruction of the Art'otel Berlin Kudamm hotel in Berlin, 60 million kuna in the renovation of the Verudela Beach resort in Pula, and 190 million kuna in the complete reconstruction of Brioni in Pula, which will carry the Park Plaza brand and be positioned among the best hotels that hotel chain.''

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As Barbara Ban/Novac writes on the 19th of March, 2019, Pula's biggest hotel group, the Arena Hospitality Group announced the continuation of its large investment cycle yesterday, the amount of which will be about half a billion kuna. These are investments in the hotel Brioni (Brijuni) and the apartment resort of Verudela Beach in Pula, the Kažela camp in Medulin, and the doing up of the Art'otel Berlin Kudamm over in Berlin, Germany.

Namely, this Pula hotel company is the only one which owns hotels in Germany and Hungary at the moment. The Arena Hospitality Group recalled that by mid-2017, via a public offer on the Zagreb Stock Exchange, they raised about 750 million kuna to continue their investment cycle.

''We're continuing with our investment cycle, which will be around half a billion kuna from 2018 to 2022. Some of the investments have already been done, some have started, and some are just beginning. Last year we renewed camp Pomer, which became the first glamping site in the country, and we believe it's one of the best in the world. That investment stood at 70 million kuna,'' said the Arena Hospitality Group's Reli Slonim.

With that move, the path to rejuvenating their camps is definitely wide open, which is a sector of theirs which they haven't invested significantly in before last year, as they devoted themselves to raising the quality of their hotels and apartment resorts, as well as their numerous acquisitions in Europe. Part of their facilities are also branded as Park Plaza.

''This year we started with the complete doing up of the Kažela camp in Medulin, and this investment is worth 128 million kuna, which is our biggest investment in the camps. After the completion of the investment, the camp will offer its guests 1,300 spacious places and 164 new luxury mobile homes. In addition, the camp will get a new entrance and reception, new beach bars, and entertainment and sports facilities,'' Arena Hospitality Group's Reli Slonim said.

It is interesting to note that mobile homes in this camp will be made up of ecological and recycled materials, and each of them will be about 40 square metres in size. This will be one of the biggest investments in camps this year in the country, and it should be finished by this [tourist] season.

A member of the management of the Arena Hospitality Group, Manuela Kraljević, also added that along with all of their current investments, they are preparing for the renovation of the Verudela Beach apartment complex too, which will begin in autumn this year. As of now, they have refurbished a ten-unit building, which is an example of how the other apartments will look when finished.

In the tourist resort of Verudela Beach, the plans are to invest about 60 million kuna during the second half of 2019. Ten accommodation units will be upgraded by this season, while the remaining 146 units and 20 villas will be renewed in time for the 2020 summer season. After the completion of the investment, the resort will be under the brand of Arena Hotels & Apartments, Kraljević said.

They also announced the reconstruction of Hotel Brioni, which for the time being, remains the only hotel in Punta Verudela that hasn't been given a ''fresh face''. It is a cult hotel which was built back in the 1970s, primarily for American guests. So far, only two showrooms have been done up, which will be somewhat larger than the existing ones, but this won't change the number of rooms.

''We have decided that we're not going to change the size of this hotel, but we will rebuild it as it is, and the room sizes will be about the same. We will invest 190 million kuna into it, and we'll start doing it up in 2020 after the [tourist] season. The hotel will be finished in one year and [everything] will be completed by 2022,'' Slonim said. In addition to investments in Croatia, this year the Pula hotel group is also renovating its hotel in Berlin, investing the equivalent of 53 million kuna into it. The hotel is located in Berlin's famous Charlottenburg district and is dedicated to the works of the famous pop art artist Andy Warhol. The investment will include a total accommodation capacity of of 152 rooms, as well as all of the other hotel facilities one might expect.

As Luka Cvitan said, the German part of the portfolio is extremely important to the Arena Hospitality Group because it gives them stability and doesn't depend solely on tourism flows in Croatia. Last year, hotels in Germany saw the largest growth, while in Croatia, things unfortunately stagnated somewhat. Business last year amounted to 758 million kuna, and was higher than last year's gain by 30 percent. That is why the Arena Hospitality Group is also thinking about further acquisitions in Belgrade in Serbia, as well as in other countries in the region.

''Also, since we have a portfolio abroad, we can offer our employees full-time employment,'' said Cvitan.

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Click here for the original article by Barbara Ban for Novac/Jutarnji

The state has decided to discontinue talks with the Pula hotel group Arena Hospitality Group, the former Arenaturist, about the sale of Riviera Hotel in Pula city center, reports Jutarnji List on November 26, 2018.

The Riviera Hotel in Pula is located in a beautiful old Austro-Hungarian building from early 20th century and was run for years by the largest Pula hotel company. The hotel, as it does every year, closed in mid-October, but the question is whether it will open its doors ahead of the next tourist season. For a very long time, nothing has been invested in the hotel precisely because of unresolved ownership issues, so the luxury facility is officially categorized as just a guest house.

According to Minister of State Property Goran Marić, his ministry has not managed to come to an agreement with the hotel group. “Unfortunately, we have failed to agree. The State Property Act explicitly defines how to deal with such property. Unfortunately, the Arenaturist administration has approached the process as negotiations, and the State Property Ministry is unable to negotiate. They do not understand that there can be no agreement based on business negotiations. We do not have the possibility to negotiate, and they do not understand it or do not want to understand it,” Marić said.

Therefore, his ministry has filed a request with the State Attorney's Office for the collection of all receivables that did not pass the statute of limitations for the use of the hotel and for its return to the state.

“When the State Attorney's Office solves this on behalf of the state, we will announce a public tender for sale, and they can apply,” Marić explained. He could not say when that would happen.

“I can estimate something that is not within the competence of the State Property Ministry. When the actions of the State Attorney's Office and courts will be done, the answer to this is never known in Croatia,” Marić pointed out honestly.

Apparently, the Riviera Hotel in Pula was being sold for about 30 million kuna, and the Arena Hospitality Group had big plans for it and wanted to resolve the ownership issues for a long time. The company did not want to comment on the latest turn of events.

For more on the Croatian hotels, click here.

Translated from Jutarnji List (repoted by Barbara Ban).

Arena Hospitality Group continues to invest in its accommodation facilities in Istria

Two companies with their seats in Istria saw outstanding results in 2017.

Arena Pomer is turning into a unique glamping site