Big investment plans for the Croatian tourism giant.
Valamar Riviera intends to invest 2.2 billion kunas into its tourist portfolio by 2020, or around 600 million kuna annually, to become the leader in the Croatian tourism industry and spread beyond Croatia’s borders. Valamar Riviera CEO Zeljko Kukurin announced that the company will also introduce a new brand in late 2017, reports Jutarnji List on June 9, 2017.
He spoke at the official opening of two new Valamar resorts, Valamar Girandella Resort and Family Life Bellevue Resort in Rabac. They are the largest tourism investments this year, in which the company invested 562 million kunas and brought 764 new accommodation units to Istria. “We started working on the project a year and a half ago. The construction itself was completed in seven months, and we are proud that we have been able to find the project designer in the local community, Studio 92,” said Kukurin before announcing that the Family Life Bellevue Resort has already received 1,200 British guests, brought by their partner, TUI.
Depending on the type of accommodation, the prices for all-inclusive stay are between 250 and 600 euros per night and room.
Valamar also plans to open the Valamar Girandella Maro 5-star resort. The opening is scheduled for 2018, which is the best evidence of company’s investments plans for the following years. Valamar has also partnered with the prestigious Kinderhotel chain for family vacations, which will make the Maro resort the third such facility in Croatia.
“We are investing heavily because we want to take advantage of very favourable circumstances in the financial markets, primarily low interest rates, although we have adverse effects from the political level due to the abolition of the lower VAT rate for tourism. These effects amount to 17 million kunas at the 2016 level, and we will have to see what will happen next,” said Kukurin, confirming that the hotel business had been affected by the Agrokor crisis.
“That is a large business system, and it affects virtually everybody, but we have not had a major business relationship with that company, except in the part of the Adriatica.net business, which we have managed to solve. Of course, we had to reset our distribution policy a bit,” Kukurin said.
The two new resorts employ a total of 630 employees, out of which 350 are employed in new roles. The company was helped when it came to finding good staff by an unfortunately high unemployment rate in Labin, which is the reason why the local population is a major part of Valamar’s staff in Rabac.
Kukurin said there are even cases of returnees to Labin, and that people who had left their hometown several years ago to work in the United States and have now returned. At this time, the Family Life Bellevue Resort has about one hundred children’s cribs, which demonstrates that Rabac is a popular destination for family vacations.
