Investment in tourism is a machine boasting many wheels which must keep turning and following world tourism trends on a constant basis.

Stagnation in the tourism sector has been threatening Croatia following a few record tourism years, and while many expected such a drop as more of the country's older tourism rivals recover respectively, just how can Croatian hotels keep their rooms full and their offer hot in the face of strong competition from long-time tourism kings like Spain and nearby Greece?

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 6th of November, 2018, over the now rapidly approaching winter period, the well-respected Adriatic Luxury Hotels hotel group will continue its massive investment cycle and focus on properly restoring and redoing some of their highest category hotels located in one of the country's most popular tourist destinations, southern Dalmatia's Dubrovnik area.

After the luxurious ''doing up'' of two top Dubrovnik hotels, Hotel Kompas (Lapad) and Hotel Excelsior (Sveti Jakov area), Adriatic Luxury Hotels have announced that the same will be done to another of their high-end hotels, Hotel Bellevue, which closed its doors to guests on October the 31st this year, in order to prepare for the huge renovation works of the hotel's accommodation facilities and part of the hotel's interior which are due to begin during the winter.

Adriatic Luxury Hotels will invest more than 400,000 kuna per room in the upcoming complete re-doing of the top hotel's rooms and apartments, representing the first significant investment in Hotel Bellevue since its inauguration over a decade ago, back in 2006.

The Portuguese design studio Tereza Prego is heavily engaged in the project, specialising in the interior design of exclusive hotels and other high-end residences.

As things currently stand, it seems that the redesigned Hotel Bellevue will be ready by the spring of 2019.

Click here to see just how the hotel will look upon opening its doors early next year.

Want to keep up to date with Croatia's investment in tourism and see if any hotels in an area you're planning to stay in are about to undergo makeovers? Make sure to follow our business page.

Doing business in Croatia is always a hot topic, especially when it comes to listing the long list of negative experiences people have endured and hoops they have had to jump through in order to get a basic task done. While this isn't always the case, it's certainly the rule more than it is the exception, but just when will Croatia learn that the ease of doing business is far more likely to attract potential investors than natural beauty is?

As Ana Blaskovic/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 1st of November, 2018, not much has come from the grandiose announcements made by Andrej Plenković earlier this year that 2018 will be the year of reforms for Croatia. 

Many people will simply make such a statement for the sake of making it, to keep up the tradition of disliking politicians and the political system, or simply as a protest against the current prime minister, but despite all of the above, this isn't a malignant interpretation, but a concerning one stated on the Doing Business World Bank scale. Croatia held 51st place last year when it came to the ease of doing business, but in 2018, Croatia returned to 58th place among 190 countries across the world.

The year of reforms indeed.

Discussions about methodology and criteria when it comes to doing business in Croatia can of course be debated and argued over, but they are the same for everyone and whatever conclusion one may arrive to, ultimately, nothing can change the fact that the number on the aforementioned scale is an unfavouravle one, and such scales are a very important tool when it comes to investors deciding whether or not to bring their capital, their skills and know-how, and open jobs here in Croatia, or simply to go somewhere else. The average start-up time for doing business in Croatia is a rather uninspiring 22.5 days, in neighbouring Serbia it is typically 5.5 days, and in Slovenia, it usually takes 8 days.

These figures perfectly illustrate the two areas that remain ''cancerous'' to the system and hinder any progress - the judiciary and of course, the public administration. Although a company's name can be electronically registered at a commercial court, that same court needs an average of two entire weeks just to issue a piece of paper confirming it, and without them and their pieces of paper, it's impossible to open a company bank account or design and make a company stamp.

The worst of the worst in this situation appears to relate to construction licenses (159th place in the world) where instead of simplification, four new procedures have conveniently been added, so that the process lasts for an utterly ridiculpus 146 days. In a rather embarrassing comparison, Serbia is at 11th place with a 40-day shorter process.

There is a proverbial sea, no, ocean, of such examples and the naked truth is simple yet brutal: Croatia is definitely going in the right direction and is making a lot of progress, but other countries are simply doing much more.

It's now high time that the Croatian Government realised that Croatia is not above any other country, and that investments don't come knocking at the door because of natural beauty, warm weather and a nice beach or two, but owing to the ease of doing business, which should be any normal country's top priority.

With investors frequently having nothing but complaints, red tape taking an insane amount of time to get through and money simply being lost in the ''Bermuda Triangle'' that is Croatia, all while trying to make a stamp as if we've taken a trip back to the 20th century, the question is - when will the penny finally drop?

Want to keep up with the business, investment and economic news in Croatia? Make sure to follow our business page.

Click here for the original article by Ana Blaskovic for Poslovni Dnevnik

HEP's Distribution System Operator (ODS) plans for investing in Croatia include more than 60 million kuna by 2021 in Hvar alone.

As Darko Bicak/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 27th of October, 2018, in the period between 2018 to 2021, HEP Group will be investing in Croatia almost six billion kuna in the power grid throughout Croatia, as was recently announced in Stari Grad, Hvar.

HEP has pointed out that by investing in Croatia such a large sum, of which approximately four billion kuna will be poured into distribution and more than 1.8 billion kuna into the transmission network, HEP will create the proper preconditions for the further development of the Croatian economy, the country's tourism, and the security of the supply of both existing and future consumers throughout Croatia.

In the coastal areas and islands alone, HEP intends to invest about 1.2 billion kuna by 2021, this cash injection will directly contribute to the security of existing and future customers, have a significant impact on the development of tourism and the economy, and will also aid in the intended creation of a better quality of life and to the population survival of the country's many islands.

Of this huge amount, almost one billion kuna will be spent on the country's power grid, on renewable energy sources, and on more fueling stations for electric vehicles on the Adriatic.

HEP has emphasised that Croatian companies are very much involved in the implementation of the aforementioned large investments, and that these investments have been confirmed to be one of the most important drivers of the Croatian economy. The HEP-Operator Distribution System (HEP ODS) is planning to invest as much as 800 million kuna in the distribution network in the country's coastal areas in the period between 2019 and 2021, while over the coming decade, the plan is to invest a massive total of two billion kuna.

Investing in Croatia - and its islands

During the same period, HEP ODS plans to lay down 33 kilometres of submarine cables at a cost of about 43 million kuna, while for the period between 2022-2028, they plan to lay down 124 kilometres of submarine cables, totaling about 161 million kuna, or about 200 million kuna in the next 10 years.

An additional 339 million kuna will be invested by the Croatian Transmission System Operator (HOPS) by 2021, in exchange for high voltage submarine cables. In the Dalmatian network alone in 2018, HEP invested a massive 238 million kuna, and a total of about 500 million kuna was invested in the system of the entire coast.

HEP ODS plans to invest more than 60 million kuna into Hvar alone by 2021. These investments will include the reconstruction of TS Stari Grad, and then the reconstruction of the network on the southeastern part of the island with 15 TSs. The most significant investment of 40 million kuna will go to the construction of TS Hvar. In addition, the laying of the Podgorica submarine cable will also take place, at a value of 12 million kuna.

 Click here for the original article by Darko Bicak for Poslovni Dnevnik

Interested in more stories about investing in Croatia? Follow the TCN business page. 

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