​Croatia's tourism needs more investments in hotels and quality accommodation

Croatia's tourism can draw closer to the results of strong tourist Mediterranean countries primarily with more investments in hotels and other high-quality accommodation because that type of accommodation generates far more added value than other accommodation categories, analyst Velimir Sonje has said.

Sonje made the statement at a briefing held by the Croatian Tourism Association (HUT).

This year HUT has introduced briefings on tourism which, as HUT president Veljko Ostojic said, will host macroeconomists to provide analyses and outlooks for Croatian tourism with the aim of improving it at all levels.

Sonje was the first to present his analysis of the contribution of various types of accommodation to added value and economic development.

It is evident that only hotel accommodation generates greater added value, Sonje said, noting that his analysis refers to 2017 and 2018 when there were just under 1,000 hotels in Croatia.

"Something isn't right with that number because Croatia has an exceptionally long coastline, much longer than Cyprus, which has 800 hotels. Apart from building hotels on the coast, we could build and develop hotels inland, too, and that would certainly contribute a lot more to tourism and the economy overall," said Sonje.

He said that it was already known that tourism revenues, in the amount of €10 billion, generated by foreign tourists, accounted for about 20% of GDP, but added that it was not common knowledge  that tourism companies alone, with about HRK 20 billion in revenue, accounted for 5.4% of GDP.

That is doubled to about 11% of GDP when revenue from transport, retail and other tourism-related activities are added to tourism companies, he said.

"Croatia is quite specific among numerous tourist countries, probably mostly due to the small share of hotel beds, of a mere 16%, in the total number of beds, yet hotels account for 28% of total bed nights. Their seasonality is lower and they are occupied for about 150 days compared to other types of accommodation, where occupancy is half of that. That means that physical productivity is higher there and that there is huge potential for further growth," Sonje believes.

(Hina)

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