April the 6th, 2025 – The Leonardo Hotels brand is planning its expansion to the Croatian market via Leonardo Hotels Central Europe.
As Sinisa Malus/Poslovni Dnevnik writes, Leonardo Hotels Central Europe, which is based in Germany, recently announced plans to enter the Croatian market as part of its broader expansion strategy.
“In the coming years, there are plans for new hotels in Germany and neighbouring countries. A special focus will be placed on expanding the group’s portfolio in France, as well as in the Scandinavian, Croatian and Serbian markets,” the company said in a press release reported by the SEEnews portal.
Over the past year, Leonardo Hotels acquired 23 hotels across the Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Ireland and the United Kingdom for a total of around 604 million euros, the statement said.
Leonardo Hotels Central Europe also revealed that it has several properties in the pipeline for its lifestyle brand NYX Hotels. It added that it remains strongly committed to its new individual hotel brand Leonardo Limited Edition.
“We’ve expanded our portfolio by more than 40 hotels over the past three years. We’ve been pushing both tourist and business destinations in a targeted manner to strengthen our position across Europe in the long term,” said Jan Heringa, Vice President of Development at Leonardo Hotels Central Europe.
Leonardo Hotels Central Europe is otherwise part of the Israeli Fattal Hotel Group and currently manages a portfolio of 110 hotels. It boasts around 18,000 rooms in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Spain, Italy and France, according to its website.
Recent data shows that Croatian four- and five-star hotels were the most fully booked during summer last year, between 92 and 95 percent. That said, Croatian hotel capacities didn’t grow exponentially last year. Tourism market experts say that it is imperative to increase the number of around 182,000 hotel beds in the coming years.
Overall, Croatia has 1,206 hotels with just over 183,000 beds, and the high or highest-class capacities already slightly predominate. A total of 93,000 hotel beds in Croatia are concentrated in 66 five-star hotels and 435 four-star hotel facilities.
There are 381 three-star hotels boasting 58,000 beds, while 59 modest two-star hotels still have only 13,600 beds (another 265 facilities with 17,500 beds are classified into various hotel subcategories).
The number of stars, however, doesn’t always tell the whole story when it comes to hotels on the Croatian market. Some hotels consciously choose to remain with one star less, even though they could compete for a higher category. This is primarily because they estimate that they will have a better market share in this way when it regards the market they’re addressing.
