Although he stepped into the tourism waters last year by taking over and renovating the Materada campsite and the boutique hotel Mauro in Poreč, the name Alberto Golomeić, owner of the company Teri-trgovina, has only recently appeared in the media, when he took over the well-known Opatija hotel Grand hotel Adriatic from the Slovenian Istrabenz, which has more than three hundred accommodation units.
Completely unknown to the public (there is not a single photograph of him on the internet!), Golomeić has been running a wholesale business of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages since 1992 and, with a revenue of 244 million achieved in 2014, is the largest beverage distributor in Croatia after Agrokor. Although he personally does not want to talk to journalists and did not respond to our call, his colleagues say he is a very smart man from Zagreb’s Dubrava who has conservative business principles, never falls into debt, is very frugal, and invests wisely in business. According to data from Poslovna Hrvatska, Teri-trgovina has recorded continuous revenue growth for more than five years (in 2010 it achieved three times less, 76 million kuna) in this demanding and highly competitive industry where half of the businesses have failed. Its profit has varied: from three million kuna in 2011, 18.6 million in 2012 to 8.6 million kuna in 2014.
Golomeić’s colleagues claim he was one of the biggest disruptors of the former Gastro group, where his competition did not allow him to enter the Supervisory Board because he allegedly did not respect the agreement on distribution and territorial expansion, but they add that he profited significantly from the Group. No one knows where he got the money, much of which he allegedly financed from his own capital.
According to media reports, he paid four million euros for the Adriatic hotel (plus eight million euros in debts), while the initial price six years ago, at which Istrabenz sold one of the most famous congress hotels and Opatija brands, was 23 million euros. In addition to Teri-trgovina, Golomeić opened the company Horeca trgovina in 2014, which achieved 17 million kuna in revenue that same year. Golomeić’s business acquaintances say he never wanted to work with large hoteliers and lower himself to their prices, which has clearly proven to be an excellent business decision. The only person officially listed as a director in his companies is Sylvia Premilovac, who once worked in the Gastro group as an executive director for asset management in the Finance and Accounting Sector, at Atlantic Trade as an assistant, and at the company HGspot as the director of finance and accounting as well as legal and human resources services. If he wants to engage more seriously in tourism, as shown by the purchase of the Adriatic, Golomeić will certainly need a management team to run that business.
