Tourism minister, national hospitality industry association chief hold talks

Tourism Minister Nikolina Brnjac and the chairman of the national hospitality industry association, Marin Medak on Monday held talks on the challenges facing that sector, the consequences of the pandemic, legal solutions, digitisation and other topics, the ministry said in a press release.

"Until now too, through dialogue we have arrived at a series of solutions with which we are trying to save jobs in the tourism sector and related activities and today's meeting was constructive," Minister Brnjac said briefly after the meeting.

She added that last week she had met with representatives in hospitality from various parts of Croatia including the president of the hospitality association from Istria and Kvarner islands, Vedran Jakominic who is also the vice president of the national association.

Medak assessed the talks as good with the remark that they spoke about the future and less about "stopgap measures" and the current situation which "is as it is."

"Apart from the problems that we could have in the future we immediately presented the minister with solutions to some of these problems, such as urgent digitisation in hospitality and that we should be included in preparing and adopting some documents like the future sustainable tourism strategy," he said.

Medak is convinced that together they will succeed in establishing a digital platform in hospitality that will integrate all hospitality providers and their needs - supplies, sales, legal solutions, institutions and other tools that will facilitate doing business and in communication.

The delegation informed the minister of the association's initiative for a model of categorising restaurants and other hospitality premises and to call it the "kravata" (cravat).

They consider it to be essential to define the strategy in the next few months and to adopt certain amendments to the law on providing hospitality services and to update those services that they can withstands crises situation in the 21st century.

Asked whether he believed that hospitality businesses would reopen after December 21 and before Christmas, Medak said that he doesn't believe that will be possible and that the lockdown could last until the end of January.

"The thing we are still trying to negotiate with the national response team is to allow anyone who wishes to, particularly cafes, to prepare coffee to go because at the moment they aren't allowed to do even that unlike stores, petrol stations and other outlets that have that option. We'll see if we manage to succeed in that," said Medak.

(Hina)

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