As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Crnjak writes, following one year of preparation, the Croatian charter.hr portal has officially been launched by Selma Cmelik, a tourist communication specialist with many years of experience working in charter and the owner of the digital marketing agency Zona Plus. Her idea was to gather all the information, tools, guidelines and various resources necessary for more successful business of nautical charter companies in this country, but also to encourage digitalisation in the sector.
“As someone who worked in the charter industry and is now in digital marketing, I felt the need to create a website that would have all that important information for everyday charter business, but which also contains ideas, tools and resources in the form of statistical reports and trends within this industry.
That hasn’t been the case here on the Croatian market so far. As a former charter employee, I know how challenging it can be to get hold of all of the relevant information, especially when it comes to tax and legislative guidance. The development of digitalisation has also provided more and more opportunities, but there was still almost nothing dedicated to the charter industry.
We always had to compare ourselves with the hotel sector, we had to depend on the choice of individual service providers and apart from specialised fairs there was no place to find a good choice of solutions. Therefore, I expect that the charter sector will have multiple benefits from this project,” explained Cmelnik.
The Croatian charter.hr platform is primarily intended for professionals in nautical charter, directors, managers, operatives in charter bases and reservation departments. It also connects all other services naturally based on this industry, and so it represents an opportunity to connect companies that offer their products and services to charter companies.
“Basically, the Croatian charter.hr platform is a place that advocates the digitalisation and optimisation of nautical charter. We plan to publish articles on various business topics, e-books talking about trends from within the industry, and about digital tools as necessary things for the automation and optimisation of business processes. We’ll do our best to conduct some research in order to assess the needs of the industry well and address them correctly,” announced the entrepreneur.
The plan is for the Croatian charter.hr platform to eventually become a membership platform where members will have additional benefits such as legal, tax and accounting advice and services at their disposal, but more content needs to be added to reach that goal. Currently, the web space for services is free until the end of the year, but the plan is to start with toll packages from January 2022 in order to make the portal sustainable.
“At the moment, all companies that have something to offer to charters and want to present their products or services can contact us and we’ll set up a page for them for free. We’ve agreed cooperation with experts in insurance, finance, digital marketing and sales. They create content that is interesting and needed by users. My goal is to make the content on the web really relevant and useful,” concluded Cmelnik.
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