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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