January 15, 2021 – The renowned Swiss portal HolidayCheck awarded the prestigious HolidayCheck Special Award 2021. Among 607 awarded hotels, there were also two Croatian hotels – Hotel Miramar in Opatija and Hotel Plaža Duće in Dugi Rat.

As reported by Nera Miličić, head of the Croatian National Tourist Board in Munich, the best and most successful hotels in as many as 35 countries have been selected according to more than 420 thousand reviews from portal users. In Croatia, the award was given to the Miramar Hotel in Opatija and the Hotel Plaža Duće in Dugi Rat.

"As an indicator of guest satisfaction in the world, the HolidayCheck portal is a benchmark that guests use with confidence to check the quality of accommodation. The award ceremony once again shows the specificity of the tourist year behind us. Also, it classifies our hotels and Croatia as a destination that stands out with its offer even in challenging pandemic conditions," said Miličić.

As the entire hospitality sector faced extraordinary circumstances, certain adjustments were made to the HolidayCheck award. The minimum qualification criteria were at least 25 published reviews for the hotel from December 1, 2019, to November 30, 2020, at least 90 percent of user recommendations and adherence to the HolidayCheck Code of Conduct.

Source: Croatian National Tourist Board

Among the hotels that meet these criteria, only the ten most popular hotels from a particular region can win the award. In addition to custom criteria, this year's award has a new design and is called "HolidayCheck Special Award 2021."

The HolidayCheck portal is the largest independent travel web portal in the German-speaking area. Based on authentic reviews, of which almost 10 million have been published on the hotels alone, it enables reservations and reviews of numerous offers. The portal offers a range of important and up-to-date information on destinations around the world. It attaches the most significant importance to the reviews of the travelers who have stayed in a place.

Thanks to authentic reviews and expert advice, every tourist can find and book the best vacation for themselves in locations worldwide. The portal has been operating since 2003 and is headquartered in Bottighofen, Switzerland, near the German border town of Constance.

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As Dora Koretic/Novac writes on the 20th of February, 2020, the Republic of Croatia should be richer for 2478 new hotel rooms over the next five years, but given the currently extremely low share of hotel accommodation in the Croatian tourism sector, as well as the goals we set for the Croatian tourism strategy, the news doesn't really provide much room for optimism.

Statistics prepared and presented by Horwath HTL consultant partner Sinisa Topalovic recently as part of the Adria Hotel Forum showcase the current investor interest in investing in hotels in the region by 2025, and although Croatia is ranked fourth out of twelve countries by the number of hotel rooms which should be added, the numbers are still far from the goals that had been set for the period from 2013 to 2020, which was to get 20,000 new hotel rooms.

The good news for Croatian tourism is that when compared to the country's immediate region, the average investment per hotel key will be higher than the regional average, but this is mainly due to the fact that investors have, at least in the last years, significantly implemented brownfield four-star projects, which mean less risky investments, and now they have more serious greenfield projects of a higher category in their sights.

The statistics on the number of branded hotel rooms don't allow for too much optimism either, since the majority of those realised here in Croatia will fall on the investments of the local hoteliers themselves, while two Four Season projects on the island of Hvar and in Kupari (near Dubrovnik), Hilton Costabella, Marriott in Split and the Aman resort in Cavtat are currently in the pipeline.

Croatian investors have once again shown that they don't truly believe in the importance that a reputable international hotel name can bring to them, but prefer to perform on their own on the Croatian tourism scene as some sort of one man show.

''Croatia must immediately and urgently open up space for the growth of the hotel industry, not only for large hotels but also for small, family and boutique hotels, because the current pattern of development leads to a further reduction of the competitiveness of the entire sector. The sooner this is understood at the level of decision-makers, the more time we'll have left to rectify the already severely impaired sustainability of this sector. This problem requires a holistic approach from multiple ministries to create the conditions for competitive growth,'' said Topalovic.

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The plan is to build a facility along the beautiful Mrežnica river with eight rooms and two suites, a total of 22 beds, and an outdoor sauna and even a swimming pool. The idea will surely draw at least some of the tourism attention away from the busy Croatian coast and into the country's green, continental heart.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Crnjak writes on the 12th of September, 2019, the entrepreneurial Vukmanić family from Zvečaj, who have been developing tourism along the Mrežnica river in continental Croatia, far from the coast, for almost three decades, are set to build a new brand accommodation facility next to the old mill in Belavići, alongside the DP Restaurant and Mrežnica house (Mrežnička kuća).

Dalibor Vukmanić, co-owner of the VAJ hospitality company, plans to build an eight-room and two-suite facility with a total of 22 four-star beds, with an outdoor sauna and a pool overlooking the Mrežnica river, as well as the revitalisation of an old mill that will function for presentations of old crafts. VAJ plans to invest around seven million kuna in the project.

"This is the reconstruction of existing facilities with an upgrade, the site houses an old mill, a miller's apartment, a warehouse and a barn. Parts of it will be demolished, and some parts will be renovated and upgraded in accordance with the building permit that we just received,'' he explaind.

The idea is to categorise the facility, together with the DP restaurant and Mrežnica house, as an integral hotel so that it can be marketed in the best way possible.

Namely, in order to preserve the peace of the guests, the new accommodation facility will not have an open restaurant and therefore cannot be independently registered as a hotel, but there will be a reception desk for all the facilities.

It's likely that the Mrežnica river's brand new guest facility will open in 2021, but before the summer, which will of course also depend on the project's future contractors. In addition to contractors' bidding, in the coming period, investors will consider what options are available for realising grants to facilitate investment, and construction should begin next summer or in the autumn of 2020 at the latest.

In the long run, the plan is for this new facility, as well as the DP restaurant, to remain open all year-round, as it will have facilities not only related to swimming in the Mrežnica river.

Although this year's swimming season only started at the end of July due to adverse weather conditions, Vukmanić reveals the encouraging fact that their facilities had a ten percent increase in overnight stays and about fifteen percent more traffic in total than last year.

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It might seem that Croatian tourism is continuing to boom, but is it? While the country recorded an excellent pre-season which is in line with Croatia's desire for year-round tourism, it seems that Croatia's hotels are experiencing a worse booking rate than they did last year.

As Marija Crnjak/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 5th of July, 2019, numerous additional efforts are being made to make sure last minute reservations in Croatia's hotels manage to close in on, or reach last year's figures, the Croatian Tourism Association (Hrvatska Udruga Turizma) revealed yesterday.

By the end of June this year, the number of booking reservations for the height of the summer season in Croatia's hotels fell by three to seven percent in comparison to the same period last year, and as previously mentioned, additional efforts are being made to try to get last-minute reservations up to last year's rate. This was revealed yesterday by the Croatian Tourism Association upon presenting the results of the hotel sector in the second quarter.

"The first half of the current year shows that the announcements of market challenges and turbulence from the beginning of this year were accurate. In the conditions caused by economic uncertainties from emerging markets and growing competition in the Mediterranean, the struggle for each guest is intensifying, especially during the main tourist season. All the information we have is that this tourist season will be the most challenging one over the last few years,'' said the director of the Croatian Tourism Association, Veljko Ostojić.

He added that in the adjustment of policies to adapt to the new market realities, the real ''borders'' of the competitiveness of Croatian tourism can be clearly seen. Most deem Croatia's tourist industry to be continually violated by a much talked about high VAT rate, and that VAT rate is higher than in other countries across the Mediterranean who also rely heavily on tourism as a strong if not main economic branch, as well as in neighbouring Hungary and Austria.

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As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 24th of May, 2019, a protected three-storey building in the Dalmatian town of Omiš, which operated for 97 years as a factory and was constructed back during Austro-Hungarian rule will be redesigned into no less than a hotel in the next two years.

''The Croatian brand of pasta "Cetina" will remain, we've preserved it, as well as all of the jobs from the pasta factory. Twenty-two workers were taken care of, we've all sorted everyting out,'' Ivica Babić, the owner of the bakery and the sales chain "Babić" stated clearly after being requested to shed light on the situation by Slobodna Dalmacija. As of June the 1st, the former pasta factory in Omiš will end its work, after 97 long years.

Namely, the building on the eastern outskirts of Omiš, located at the mouth of Cetina, next to the town's harbour, will be converted into a hotel and thus end the work of the old factor that was otherwise in operation for almost 100 years.

''Nobody's getting put out of work, there are no dismissals. We've made sure to give jobs to all of our workers according to their respective capabilities, someone will be a driver, another will be a salesman... We've had two requests for severance pay, which we have taken care of properly,'' Babić stated when discussing the fate of employees who worked in the factory, which was sold to Krunoslav Šarić two years ago, but the well-known and popular Dalmatian "manistra" continued to be producted, and it will continue to do so, until the very beginning of next month.

''With our strategic partnership we've ensured that the brand will remain, but now production will be relocated to Čakovec. It was necessary to optimise the production of pasta, and because the "Cetina" building in Omiš was dilapidated, it was necessary to invest large amounts of money in its reconstruction or move the factory from the city centre to a more suitable place for production,'' revealed the boss of the Babić chain, expressing his satisfaction with the fact that they have been able to successfully preserve the brand "Cetina", as well as provide new jobs for the factory's former workers.

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Ever been to beautiful Lošinj? If you're a lover of athletics, running and other forms of active tourism when on holiday, then this is the Croatian destination for you, with a newly certified Run Friendly hotel tailored to your needs to prove it.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 13th of May, 2019, Lošinj's Vitality Hotel Punta has been awarded a Run Friendly certificate, meaning that the hotel is tailored to accommodate runners as well as other active tourists.

The certification process is run by the Zagreb-based company Run Croatia, and Lošinj's Hotel Punta owned by the hotel company Lošinj Hotels & Villas is one of the few Croatian hotels that can boast of holding this certificate.

Lošinj's Vitality Hotel Punta has satisfied all of the necessary conditions to meet the standards of the process of certification to be declared a Run Friendly hotel and has been given the highest possible categorisation (three tennis shoes).

This means that all of this Lošinj hotel's visitors can enjoy a number of benefits as a supplement to the usual hotel offer within its Run Friendly package. This type of hotel is fully tailored to the needs of runners, and guests are entitled to the aforementioned Run Friendly package that includes a high quality running t-shirt, a medal as a reward for running the tracks around the hotel, a racetrack map, a variety of running tours for beginners all the way to those requiring advanced programs, healthy food and drinks at the mini bar, energy bars, late checkout opportunities, and special massage programs.

In addition to all the advantages, the island of Lošinj as a destination itself offers a number of attractive racing tracks for all running level abilities within a beautiful landscape with a sea view, numerous vistas and pretty coves.

"With the concept of a run-friendly hotel, we wish to provide our guests, especially those who prefer an active holiday, with additional convenience to spend an ideal active outdoor holidayin the perfect untouched nature outdoors. All recreants and runners staying in our hotel will find the ideal conditions and hotel treatment fully adapted to their lifestyle,'' said Rikardo Hesky, director of Jadranka hotels.

Because of its own special microclimate, Lošinj itself is an ideal place for sports activities with its clean, pure air which is additionally enriched with aromatic Mediterranean flora.

"By launching the Run Friendly hotel certification project, we were aiming to provide added value to hotels as well as to runners as we recognised the value of this international trend - an active lifestyle and active holidays. The Run Friendly package for hotels offers guests everything they need to run and a peaceful island location is yet another reason for them to spend their time on holiday actively and take a step forward for their psychological and physical health,'' stated Berislav Sokač from Run Croatia.

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As Marija Crnjak/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 12th of March, 2019, Croatia's hotel sector stagnated last year in terms of the number of new rooms and in the sense of the level of entry of foreign hotel brands. A lot of this, but of course not all of it, is because Croatia has deemed it more profitable to build and invest more in private accommodation, an often ''grey'' area of Croatia's tourism industry with much lower taxes and a very poor level of general regulation. The level of major investments in new hotel rooms has fallen significantly, the number of which grew by a mere one percent in one year.

Due to all the above mentioned conditions, the market is still dominated by local investors, quite a few new names have appeared on the scene in the last year, which are still to be properly positioned as hotel brands, according to the annual global report on hotel chains in 22 European countries, "European Chains & Hotels Report 2019" by the Horwath Consulting House HTL. In the Republic of Croatia, more than a quarter of these hotels, more specifically 186 of them, operate under 43 brands in total, of which 22 are local and 21 are international brands.

"High seasonality and an unfavourable environment for investors, especially with [granting the necessary] permits, are the main reason we're in 159th place on the Doing Business list, they're the biggest barriers for foreign investors, who find it difficult to decide on taking risks in developing projects in Croatia, although a few positive examples have occurred on the market which do lead to more optimism,'' stated Siniša Topalović from Horwath's Zagreb-based office.

Horwath's analysis, which is based on the numbers from Real Capital Analytic, only takes into account investments of more than 5 million dollars, reveals that investment in hotels in Croatia is down by as much as 90 percent, from 59 million euro to a mere 7 million euro.

''The growth of hotel brands in 2018 in Croatia (4 percent) should be observed through the proper placement of several local hotel names, and only time will reveal whether or not these names will be branded on the market,'' Topalović explained.

Additionally, although Croatia can be statistically put in a very good position in terms of the number of brands operating here, the market situation shows that the level of activity is lagging behind some countries which are considered to be weaker than Croatia. A good example of that is Serbia and its increasingly popular capital city of Belgrade, which has received 40 new hotels since 2014, with growth in the hotel sector in Belgrade mainly based on foreign investments and globally respected brands such as Crowne Plaza, Radisson Blu and Luxury Collection.

Although the RevPar (revenue per hotel room) rose by an average of 16 percent in Croatia in 2018, this year a slow down is expected, caused primarily by other Mediterranean countries which are recovering from their respective problems to return to the market (this includes longtime tourism kings like Turkey and Tunisia).

The main potential seems to lie outside of the height of the summer season. Along with Serbia, where further growth is expected in the hotel segment, Albania has some great potential for foreign investors, Albania currently has the smallest share of branded hotels per total number of rooms (2 percent), and Montenegro, Croatia's neighbour to the south, also offers investors fairly favourable investment conditions and is very active in encouraging a more luxurious tourist product for the country.

Greece, known for its numerous financial issues, has entered the world's top fifteen tourist destinations despite the country's somewhat infamous ups and downs, with 150 new luxury hotels ''born'' in Greece in 2018, becoming a destination in which more than one in five hotels is in the category of 4 or 5 stars. Last year, the largest amount of investments in hotels went from the United States across the Atlantic to Spain (2.1 billion euro), following came transactions from Israel to the United Kingdom totaling over one billion euro, French investors also invested 951 million euro into the United Kingdom.

Despite all of the potentially (and likely) damning economic risks from Brexit, one of the European continent's most powerful countries, the United Kingdom, had a total of nearly 4 billion euro in investment in its massive hotel business. In 22 countries from the Horwath analysis, there were a total of 146,600 hotels on the market last year with more than six million rooms, with an average of 61 rooms per hotel. The least-branded hotels had Albania, only 12, while France has 3885 hotels in the hotel chain.

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Click here for the original article by Marija Crnjak for Poslovni Dnevnik

Something not only new, but incredibly flashy is on the cards for the Kvarner area...

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 10th of January, 2019, the town of Ika, located close to the popular Opatija, is the site of the upcoming and reportedly the most luxurious Croatian boutique five-star hotel to date, set to be opened in April by the company owned by well known Croatian entrepreneur Pavo Zubak. The total value of the project, according to its investors, stands at a massive 80 million kuna.

Kvarner's up and coming Ikador Luxury Boutique Hotel & Spa is being designed by the highly respected Artelior architecture stutio with offices in both Zagreb and London, and the very hotel itself will be housed within a 5,000-square-foot natural park. The underground tunnel below the Lungo Mare promenade will be connected to a private beach that even allows mooring for boats.

As a boutique hotel, Ikador will boast eight luxury rooms and six exclusive suites, all of which can accommodate 42 people. The minimum size of a room is fifty square metres with a terrace, while the suites provide eighty square metres, also with a terrace. The hotel will also boast the most luxurious presidential suite of up to 280 square metres, alongside 145 square metres of accompanying terrace.

Even before its actual opening, Ikador has already managed to become a member of the leading hotel association of luxury hotels, The Leading Hotels of the World, on which the hotel has certainly deserved its placement owing to the first exclusive Riva lounge in Croatia, which will be part of the hotel, has featured Kvarner's new gem. The Riva lounge is not only the first of its sort in Croatia, but is the fourth in the entire world, following those in Monte Carlo, Venice, and Mykonos, putting Opatija in a prestigious group of some of the most prestigious and most exclusive international destinations.

The aim of the investor is to create a year-round tourist destination, and in line with that desire, Ikador will offer a wide range of spa, wellness and fitness facilities which will occupy the entire third floor of the hotel, providing an impressive view of the stunning Opatija Riviera. In addition, a top a la carte restaurant with a capacity for as many as fifty guests, a cigar bar, a heated outdoor pool with sea water and an underground garage with electric car chargers will be available for guests of what will more than likely be the Kvarner area's ''place to be''.

Forty staff members will be in charge of the excellent service, most of whom will be employed permanently, as the hotel plans to remain open throughout the year.

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At the end of the year, the economic effects of this year's tourism season will be known thanks to the implementation of a new method.

Croatian and Albanian investors are repurposing two historical buildings in the heart of the Croatian capital