ZAGREB, 27 July, 2021 - Finance Minister Zdravko Marić on Tuesday did not accept proposals for a lower VAT rate on beverages and to treat labour costs as a tax deduction, while a representative of restaurant and bar owners said they would have to fend for themselves the best way they can regarding future challenges.

"My message to all restaurant and bar owners in the country, notably those who run bars, is that a very demanding period is ahead of us and that they will have to seek new loans and funding, despite the fact that we had yet another constructive meeting with the finance minister today. We can hope that in a couple of years we will have better working conditions because now that is not the case and we have not come across any understanding in regard to our proposals," Jelena Tabak, who heads the NUU association of restaurateurs, said after the meeting.

Marić recalled that a lower VAT rate was already in place in the tourism sector for accommodation, food and for the serving of food and that beverages were the only products for which VAT had not been reduced.

Commenting on the proposal to exclude labour costs from the base amount for the calculation of the VAT rate in the hospitality sector, the minister said that neither Croatia's nor the EU's tax systems recognised such a measure.

"In terms of taxation, labour costs are indeed recognised costs but in systems in which they should be recognised - the income and profit tax systems. We cannot mix direct taxes with indirect taxes such as VAT," he explained.

Marić recalled the government's measures to help the business sector, from lower taxes to the cancellation of individual contributions, as well as expanding the scope of nontaxable income, which, he said, had resulted in a rise in employment and wages, as evidenced by statistical data.

He recalled the government's job-keeping measures and coverage of fixed costs in the hospitality sector, stressing that data on fiscalisation showed that the hospitality sector had solid results and that the real peak of the tourist season was yet to come.

Dražen Biljan of the bar owners' association of the NUU Zagreb branch said that they were not happy that their proposals were not accepted and that lowering VAT on drinks would not cost the state too much, around HRK 400 million. It would, however, mean a lot for restaurant and bar owners, he said.

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ZAGREB, 4 May, 2021 - The French Institute in Croatia has on the occasion of its 100th anniversary launched a Hospitality programme which in cooperation with various institutions enables close public contact with artists.

The programme is adapted to Croatia's specific context, featuring the consequences of the health crisis and earthquakes that hit Zagreb and Sisak and Petrinja in central Croatia and is aimed at developing a programme of valorisation of Croatian artists in the premises of the French Institute where they can present their works and establish contact with a new audience.

The planned encounters are aimed at enabling a privileged experience and relationship with artists and their works, something that has been absent during this period of restricted encounters.

The institute has called on artists to participate in the programme, saying that they will be issued with a 'carte blanche' to take over the institute's premises for specific encounters with the public and to present their works.

For more about diplomacy in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

April 24, 2021 - Reuters reporters visited Plava Laguna Parentium Hotel in Poreč and seemed happy with preparations for the upcoming tourist season. 

International media praise Croatia as a lovely holiday spot, and many foreign reporters visited Croatia to check the field with their own eyes. And 2021 is no different.

As Istria Terra Magica reports, journalists from Reuters visited Parentium Hotel, a member of Plava Laguna Hotel Group.

„Reuters reports that Poreč streets are empty for now, but thanks to measures to keep tourists and tourist workers COVID-free, a good tourist season is in preparation“, says Istria Terra Magica.

The site adds that in the following weeks 80,000 tourist workers are planning to be vaccinated, and Covid-19 tests will be offered to the guests as well.

The full article about visiting Croatia is available on the Reuters website.

Dnevno.hr covered the story too and added that „Reuters is a news agency spawned across 200 locations worldwide, and a synonym for independence and integrity“. 

Plava Laguna hotel group is one of the most influential accommodation companies in Istria, with four resorts, 25 hotels, and 13 apartments across Umag, Poreč, and Rijeka.

„At Plava Laguna, everyone is welcome. From the moment they arrive to the moment they leave, we want our guests to feel the warmth of our hospitality. So we introduce them to our beautiful Istrian countryside and the wonderful Adriatic sea. We share the delights of our national cuisine and fantastic wines. We show our guests the best of Croatia“, says their official website, available in Croatian, English, German, Slovenian, and Italian language.

The website also concludes that regardless of staying in a two-star or a five-star hotel, every visitor is considered a VIP guest.

Learn more about Poreč on our TC page.

For more about travel in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

April 8, 2021 - Nautical tourists will now be able to pay the fees related to their stay online thanks to the digitalisation of nautical fees as Croatia continues dragging itself into the modern era.

Tourist fees for nautical tourists in Croatia can now be paid online, reports Goran Rihelj for Hrturizam. The website Nautika E-visitor, available in English, Croatian, German and Italian, offers the ability to accept payments according to the size of the vessel, which can stretch from 7 to over 20 metres in length, as well as by the number of people. These options are aligned with the Tourist Tax Act.

The site was launched last year as a service of the Ministry of Maritime Affairs, Transport, and Infrastructure and allowed tourists to pay and download an electronic confirmation of payment of navigation safety fees online. The entire system has been updated in regard to the digitalisation of nautical fees, and there is no longer an option to pay the fee in person, which was the only way to do it previously.

''Croatia has a fleet of 4,300 vessels, more than 140 nautical tourism ports with over 17,000 berths and over a million cruise passengers. The average consumption of nautical tourists is 126 euros per day, and in the charter sector, 183 euros per day. More than 30 percent of that money is spent on other forms of tourism, from cultural content to wine and gastronomy,'' reads the article on HRturizam.

port, pixabay

It goes on to remind readers that Croatia.hr, the main website for information on tourism owned and run by the Croatian National Tourist Board (HTZ), also has a subsite for nautical tourits. The subsite, just like the main site, is available to view in Croatian, English, German, Italian, Czech, French, Japanese, Hungarian, Dutch, Polish, Russian, Slovakian, Slovenian, Spanish, and the Swedish language.

An important step in digitalisation development of Croatia has proven and continues to prove especially useful during the ongoing global pandemic, which makes frequent physical contact with other people risky.

As such, nautical tourists generally have an edge when it comes to being able to self-isolate and enjoy their holidays safely with a chosen group of friends or family on their private vessel. This is yet another argument for them to visit Croatia, along with the breath-taking coastal landscape accompanying clear Adriatic sea.

Learn more about sailing in Croatia on our TC Page.  

For more about travel in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

ZAGREB, 7 April, 2021 - The Croatian Embassy to the Russian Federation has received initial applications for tourist visas from Russian citizens and currently there is a good interest on the Russian market in vacationing in Croatia, the Croatian Tourist Board (HTZ) said on Wednesday.

Russian national airline Aeroflot will fly from Moscow to Pula, Dubrovnik and Split every day from the start of June to the end of September, the HTZ said in a statement.

Currently, Aeroflot flies between Moscow and Zagreb once a week and plans to introduce a second weekly flight as of May, while in the summer it will operate on this route three times a week.

S7 Airlines will fly from Moscow to Pula and Dubrovnik from late April to late October, while Nordwind will connect Moscow and Zagreb during the same period.

The head of the HTZ office in Russia, Rajko Ružička, said that there is a growing demand on the Russian market for safe summer destinations, and that Croatia is one of them.

Russians can enter Croatia with a negative PCR or antigen test, a certificate proving that they have recovered from COVID-19 or a certificate showing that they have been vaccinated against COVID-19, Ružička said.

A great interest in Croatian destinations has also been shown at the recent MITT travel show, the HTZ said.  

For more about travel in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

April 6, 2021 - The first Croatian scientific book on hospitality (Excellence as a Standard in Hospitality Business) backed by the experiences of two respected authors in the business has been released! 

As Turizmoteka reports, the book published by the Aspira school (original title: Izvrsnost kao standard u ugostiteljskom poslovanju) has four chapters and 24 subchapters which will help further develop the business to the experience and allow unexperienced to set up the optimal business concept“.

The book covers specifics of the hospitality business, criteria for hiring new workers, explores questions of discipline and offers interesting findings on why some bars and restaurants fail and others remain successful. Scientific research of the book is accompanied by the experiences of the authors who are very experienced in the hospitality business.

The leading author Igor Pavel previously published a manual on managing in the field, which inspired the writing of the book. He is in the hospitality business for the past 16 years, where he gained experience in various aspects and from multiple positions and is currently hired as a manager in one of the largest American cruise ship companies. He closely worked with top managers and CEOs of various big international tourism and hospitality companies. He also trains management and workers with his educational material helping them to increase the quality of their standard.

The second author, Alen Jerkunica, is a dean and one of the founders of Aspira private school, which has international courses on hotel management and tourism as well as gastronomy in Split and Zagreb. Continuously cooperating with experts from hotel management, he also participates in research projects with scientists specialized in marketing and management in sport and tourism.

The book is so far available only in Croatian, and you can buy it here.

For more about made in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

March 25, 2021 - Both the Croatian Ministry of Tourism and Sports and Croatian tourist boards recognised the development of health tourism as a high priority for Croatia.

To discuss the development of health tourism in Croatia, a branch that is becoming one of the more important Croatian tourist products, Croatian Tourism and Sports minister Nikolina Brnjac met with Kvarner Tourist Board director Irena Peršić Živadinov, Kvarner Health Tourism cluster president Vladimir Možetič, and Zagreb Tourist Board director Martina Bienenfeld. As life expectancy and healthy lifestyle trends increase, the value of health tourism grows. The novel coronavirus only made that growth even more rapid.

"Over 80,000 tourists in 2020 visited Kvarner (well-known for Lošinj Island and its hospital for respiratory issues) for health services. Today, many people are recovering from the consequences of the novel coronavirus there," said the Kvarner Tourist Board director Živadinov.  

"We have all the advantages for further development of health tourism: a good reputation of health services, qualified staff, natural richness of thermal sources, good climate, and long tradition of tourism," said minister Brnjac. Her goal is to pull Croatia out of the perception of a country only good for the summer season.

Croatia offers health services in wellness and medicine tourism. Health tourism is most associated with the regions of Kvarner, Istria, northern Croatia, and Zagreb, but the goal is to include other regions that have the potential for health tourism and to achieve the goals of a strategy that needs to be accomplished by 2030.

Martina Bienenfeld said that the Zagreb Tourist Board is working on the City's recognition as the centre of medical excellence. She pointed out good traffic connections, a mixture of the Mediterranean and mid-Europe climate, as well as good prices of health services as great advantages of Croatia's capital to the international clientele.

The Health Care Bill and Services in Tourism Bill now allow hospitality and health tourism services in hospitals and medical centres. These legal changes are also significant in attracting further investments in the field.

For more about travel in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

ZAGREB, 25 February, 2021 - The hospitality and tourism guild in the Croatian Chamber of Crafts and Trades (HOK) on Thursday welcomed the announcement that bars with terraces will be allowed to reopen, but recommended a series of bailout measures because due to weather conditions, only some establishments will be able to work.

The guild recommended that permits to serve outdoors be extended and for outdoor serving areas to temporarily be expanded where possible.

The guild also asked that the due deadline for VAT be extended to two months for the period that epidemiological measures that restrict business are in force.

Another recommendation is that raw material in hospitality be exempt of VAT due to special circumstances in order to enable cash flow as well as abolishing monthly advance payments on income and profit tax until 31 December 2021. Those tax exemptions would ensure that certain funds remain available to cover current business expenses and ensure liquidity.

They also called for a one-off allowance for the hospitality sector. HOK recommended that the hospitality sector be approved a grant of 3% of their gross 2019 turnover in order to be able to procure basic provisions and prepare for reopening.

The guild advocates that current liabilities be rescheduled by arranging with commercial banks that all of their financial liabilities (principal, interest) on all types of loans be deferred until 2022 or for an additional 12 months after a consensus is reached.

The president of HOK's guild Joso Smolić underscored that bar owners primarily expect the continuation of existing economic measures - jobkeeping measures and allowances for fixed costs while the coronavirus crisis lasts.

ZAGREB, 17 January, 2021 - The Financial Agency (Fina) has recently reported that entrepreneurs in the tourism and hospitality sector are most exposed to the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic while the manufacturing industry and trade experience the lowest exposure.

This leading Croatian provider of financial and electronic services has conducted an analysis of creditworthiness of entrepreneurs in the country and the analysis has been based on Fina's methodology that includes Probability of Default (PD) and compliance with Basel III (Third Basel Accord or Basel Standards) guidelines.

The findings of the analysis show that 1,251 entrepreneurs in Croatia do business at minimum probability of default.

Default probability is the likelihood over a specified period, usually one year, that a borrower will not be able to make scheduled repayments.

Of those 1,251 entrepreneurs, 1,085 have not applied for state aid under the government's schemes for support to businesses to mitigate the effects of the corona crisis.

Of those 1,085 entrepreneurs whose business is stable despite the COVID-19 pandemic, most are in the manufacturing industry, 263, and as many as 259 stable entrepreneurs are in the wholesale and retail sector.

The third-ranked sector with stable entrepreneurs is the sector of expert, scientific and technical activities (133), the construction sector follows (87), and 63 stable entrepreneurs are in the water supply and waste water management sector.

Broken down by the region, the City of Zagreb with 487 stable entrepreneurs tops the ranking, and Zagreb County follows (81), Istria County ranks third (65), Split-Dalmatia County comes in as the fourth (64) while the Rijeka region has one fewer stable entrepreneur.

Broken down by the type of businesses in terms of their size, medium-sized enterprises are the most stable enterprises (715), 183 big companies are described as stable, and 181 micro businesses are in this category and only six (6) small businesses.

ZAGREB, Oct 7, 2020 - Croatian hoteliers expect this year's revenues to drop 25-75% due to the COVID pandemic and half believe recovery will take two or more years, with holiday tourism expected to recover faster and convention tourism much slower, a director in the Horwath HTL consulting company says.

Such findings come from the company's analysis of the so-called COVID year in which the pandemic has affected every industry around the world, notably tourism.

Sinisa Topalovic says the forecasts for 2021 and the growth of the global GDP are somewhat encouraging, but that recovery by country will depend and be faster if they are industrially strong, while being harder and slower in those focused on services such as Croatia.

Global and country forecasts say consumption is expected to recover in 12 to 24 months, which is a very long time, notably in tourism, which has been globally affected by the pandemic, from air travel to the hotel industry, which are recording drops in revenues from 60% to 80%, and they will not recover soon, says Topalovic.

Croatia at EU's bottom in hotel occupancy but near the top in prices

In such circumstances, Croatia managed to generate above-average results when compared with the competition in the first eight months of the year, about 40% of last year's turnover, but next year could be at least 10 to 20 percentage points better, also thanks to this year's experience, according to a Horwath HTL analysis.

Croatia's average hotel occupancy rate in the first eight months of this year was 24%, ranking it at the bottom of the EU, but in terms of prices it ranks relatively high because during the short summer holiday season Croatian hoteliers managed to keep relatively good prices, which is good given that after being lowered due to the 2008-09 crisis, they took a long time to recover, says Topalovic.

Three markets saved the season

The analysis shows that only three markets, of the more than 70 from which tourists came to Croatia in the past, saved this year's season, generating up to 60% of the total turnover - Germany, Croatia, and Slovenia.

Croatian tourists "gave life to numerous destinations" and their arrivals and overnights registered the smallest decreases from the record year 2019, the analysis says.

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