As Novac/Barbara Ban writes on the 2nd of September, 2020, while a considerable amount of Croatia’s tourism workers remain hooked on what the tourist season was like, fear what might happen in autumn and wonder how they will survive until next Easter, the crisis seems to have bypassed all those involved in renting holiday homes and Croatian luxury villas with swimming pools.
Exactly as expected, this type of accommodation was extremely highly sought after and booked by foreign tourists. A significant number of Croatian luxury villas and other such houses, especially those located in Istria, are still full, despite the fact that some Europeans, including Austrians, Slovenes and Britons aren’t bothering coming to Istria because of Croatia’s placement on the red lists of these countries. These European guests, along with Germans, make up the majority of guests in the post-season months.
However, only the German market will be able to fill these capacities to some extent, so the renters of Croatian luxury villas and other types of similar accommodation will eventually be able to be satisfied to some degree, as will the agencies that mediate in renting out this type of accommodation.
Ivan Milotic, co-owner and marketing strategist of the My Istria travel agency, which is known for renting the most luxurious houses in Istria, admitted as much. He explained that they have never had such a good level of booking in June as they did this year, which was actually to be expected given the fact that the borders re-opened to the countries from which the largest number of tourists come to Istria. After months of quarantine, everyone could hardly wait for a holiday and their arrival in the then ‘coronavirus-free’ zone.
”Due to the situation around the closing of the borders with Croatia, in September, we’ve been at about 60 percent of the occupancy of our houses. The decline started when the Austrians and Slovenes put us on their red lists. In those last 10 days of August, we lost 20 percent of our traffic because those guests packed up and returned home,” Milotic said. But that doesn’t mean he’s unhappy with a season few expected much of.
”We started receiving our first guests back at the beginning of May, so from June the 15th, after the borders opened, the occupancy of the houses would be 99.9 percent. There are perhaps a few buildings left that have gone too far with their prices, and we have a thousand facilities in our offer. That trend lasted until August the 18th when Austria put us on the red list. From Friday to Saturday that day, we lost 18 percent of our bookings,” Milotic said. But still, not everyone cancelled. He pointed out that there are guests who turned a deaf ear to these measures and came anyway.
”After that, we’ve been having an interesting situation because something gets cancelled, but then something also gets booked again. This is a really interesting season,” Milotic admitted.
”We’ve adjusted our prices somewhere, depending on the demand. We had a good amount of reservations which took place before the outbreak, but also a lot of reservations after that. In some cases, the prices were reduced by up to 20 percent, but in principle they didn’t change that much,” Milotic pointed out. He explained that after tourism started, it was to be expected that this form of accommodation would be high on people’s lists due to the level of isolation, as well as the level of quality.
”We noticed that some guests opted for houses and Croatian luxury villas instead of hotels. Some have even greater comfort than the hotels themselves, but they don’t, of course, have the same services. But in this situation the guests were looking for a place to stay where they’d feel safe. The houses and Croatian luxury villas proved to be a complete success,” he added.
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