As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Crnjak writes, the autumn occupancy of Croatian hotels this year will, as stated, exceed the pre-pandemic period, and this has been well and truly confirmed by the Bluesun Hotels & Resorts group, whose hotels are open due to demand almost until the end of October. They also report a strong return of congress guests and events.
“With the arrival of September, due to the beginning of the new academic/school year, the structure of our guests changes, and there is a change in the motive for coming, it’s not just the sea and the sun anymore. These are guests who require much more additional content, are much more active, much more mobile, more inclined to explore their destinations, the hinterland, the interior of Croatia… They’re also usually more involved in sport, more dedicated to themselves, and therefore more into exploring local gastronomy and using the wellness facilities,” said Stjepko Sosic of Bluesun Hotels & Resorts.
As such, the company put the offer of sport, gastronomic and wellness facilities and packages in the foreground, and in their promotion they addressed couples and individuals, who are the most represented in this period of the season because they want to avoid the biggest crowds and the brutal Croatian summer heat.
In addition to the above, regardless of the fact that the whole of Croatia has been on the ECDC red list since the beginning of September, it seems few people pay attention to it and new reservations are still coming in on a daily basis. “In some terms for the end of September, we had to stop selling due to lack of capacity. Considering that the weather was very nice through September, a large part of the guests extended their stays by a few days compared to the period they initially booked,” added Sosic.
Currently, in Bluesun’s nine open hotels, six of which are on the Makarska Riviera, and one campsite, in addition to an increasing number of individual guests, are sports and fitness groups.
“At the end of September and through October, we have numerous MICE (meetings, incentives, congresses and events) events in our hotels with congress facilities. MICE is much stronger this autumn than we expected and there’s been a strong demand from the corporate environment, and we’re especially pleased with the recovery of this sales segment, which is extremely important for the extension of the season. These are working meetings and mostly Croatian companies from the field of medicine, the IT sector and the pharmaceutical industry,” revealed Marija Benjak, the head of direct, group and MICE sales for the company.
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