Investment in Croatia’s Hotel Industry to Reach €1.2 billion by 2022, According to Ernst & Young.

Date: June 2018

Location: Croatia

What: Croatia is set to add 6,000 new hotel guestrooms to its inventory by 2022. The market’s inventory will also have an additional 3,700 renovated guestrooms by then.

Approximately 42 percent of these new guestrooms will come from investments made by Asian companies, including Russian and Turkish investors.

“We have included investors from Turkey and Russia in the Asia group because most of those countries’ territories belong to Asia,” said Marija Noršić from Ernst & Young’s Tourism Department in a statement.

Many of the investors have remained anonymous because they aren’t ready to announce details of their projects.

These projects include a €15-million investment in the development of a 65-room hotel in Split’s Bačvice neighborhood, a new-build 100-room hotel in Zadar and a combined investment of €22-million in two hotels on the island of Krk scheduled to open in 2022.

Most of the investments that have already been announced—42 out of 83 projects—will begin in 2018.

However, this does not represent a drop in investment in the coming years. “The number of projects that may be current in the period from 2020 to 2022 is far greater, but due to the complexity of each individual project and the large range of potential value of each investment, it is not possible to assess the value of all active projects in the period.

The figure mentioned above of more than €1.2 billion includes just those investors who were willing to share their plans. It would be wrong to think that there will be a slowdown in the growth of the market due to the smaller number of announced projects in the second part of the five-year period.

The investors were not ready to announce development plans for projects which have not yet found their sources of funding,” Noršić said.

Announced upcoming projects include a €45-million investment from Jako Andabak to redevelop the Borak Hotel in Borač scheduled to be complete in 2020 and a €15-million investment from Laguna Novigrad for the construction of a 200-room hotel in Novigrad.

THPT Comment: Given the beauty of Croatia’s coastline, this investment makes complete sense, although Croatia has been considered “risky” in recent years.

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