The Bitoraj Hotel in the center of the small and beautiful Gorski Kotar town of Fužine is the crown of Marinko Kauzlarić’s entrepreneurial career. However, Kauzlarić’s entrepreneurial story began long before the opening of Bitoraj, a four-star hotel, in 2008, owned by Marinko and his wife Vinka. Before becoming an entrepreneur, Kauzlarić was an engineer at the largest company in Fužine, Drvenjača. As soon as private entrepreneurship was enabled by the change in the socio-economic system and Croatia’s independence, the Kauzlarić couple opened a pizzeria in 1990 and founded the Fos company in 1994, which deals with hospitality and tourism activities, operating the Bitoraj Hotel, the eponymous restaurant listed among the 100 best Croatian restaurants, a café, and a travel agency. In addition to the company, the Kauzlarić family also has a family farm, a beehive, and a poultry farm.
In the family business, which has 27 permanent employees, all members of the Kauzlarić family work. However, since the beginning of July this year, due to Marinko’s retirement, the company is managed by the second generation, Andrej and Petra, the children of the Kauzlarić couple. Andrej is the director of marketing, sales, and technical maintenance, while Petra is the director of finance, procurement, and human resources.
Guests Are Still Arriving
Before the Kauzlarić family became the owners of the properties they own thanks to loans and a mortgage on their family home, they operated in rented space. Today, the Bitoraj Hotel can compete in service quality with any hotel of the same rank, and the gastronomic offer of the restaurant, which features game dishes and Gorski cuisine, attracts guests from the wider area, such as the Kvarner Riviera, Rijeka, and Zagreb.
—
—
Currently, there are fewer guests in the hotel than usual, but instead of foreigners, especially Asians who used to come in large numbers in previous years, there are now more Croats, and guests from Belgium, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia continue to arrive. The hotel is currently operating at 35 percent capacity, and to be profitable, it should be 55 percent full, but the restaurant has always generated two-thirds of the company’s revenue, and this has not changed even during the pandemic. However, maintaining stable business under these conditions, with a loan burden of two million euros, is not easy, although much more money has been invested in the development of the Fos business than the mentioned amount. The Kauzlarić family started from scratch, and in addition to money, thousands of their hours worked outside of working hours have been invested in the development of the business.
Starting with a Pizzeria
Marinko Kauzlarić emphasizes that they started this business when Fužine had no tourist facilities, and today they have 700 beds in apartments. Their first entrepreneurial initiative was opening a pizzeria overlooking Lake Bajer, which they ran until 1994 when they moved to the center of Fužine and opened a small restaurant that began offering a more complex gastronomic offer, and above the restaurant, they had two apartments. These were their beginnings in tourism, and they excelled in this business even though Vinka is a medical technician and Marinko is an electrical engineering engineer.
At the site where the hotel now stands, there was an old building in a dilapidated state that they rented in 1998 and transformed into a restaurant and six rooms through adaptation, along with two apartments, which were their first accommodation capacities. Since most of the building had been nationalized, they waited for the state to return it to owner Neda Andrić Kauzlarić, an influential politician in the former state and founder of the Faculty of Management in Tourism and Hospitality in Opatija, so that they could purchase it in 2000 for the then sum of 750,000 German marks.
Excellent Gastronomic Offer
The building has been adapted and expanded several times, transforming it into a beautiful and comfortable hotel resembling Swiss mountain hotels, and its accommodation quality has been rated excellent by guests on booking.com with a score of 8.7.
– We had a larger investment in 2007 when we adapted the existing building, added another floor, so this facility now has 25 comfortable rooms, spa and wellness, as well as a very powerful restaurant capacity. We dedicated a lot of space to food preparation because we base our entire story on gastronomy, and even in today’s total annual revenue, the restaurant accounts for two-thirds of the income.
The indoor restaurant has 140 seats in two halls, and on the terrace, there are another 70 seats, along with a café-bar, which was a salon where we held festive lunches on weekends before the hotel reconstruction. All presidents of the state who have held that position since 2007 have been our guests – emphasizes Marinko, who realized his entrepreneurial dream by opening a high-category hotel in his hometown and retired at the end of June this year, but still comes to the company daily.
In addition to engaging in entrepreneurship, he was also a successful mayor of the municipality of Fužine for twelve years, but after three terms, he did not run again due to his wife Vinka’s illness, which cost the family business success with significant heart problems.
Nothing Without Investment
The Kauzlarić family has invested much more money in business development than the mentioned two million euros, and their first loan was burdened with an interest rate of 13.5 percent. The Fos company, three years ago, when it was renovating the fifth floor of the hotel and the wellness center, in which it invested one and a half million kuna, received 150,000 kuna in non-refundable funds from the Ministry of Tourism, which subsidized two percent interest for one of the loans in 2006.
In the meantime, the Kauzlarić family had to restructure a two million euro loan in 2015, and due to the pandemic, they expect difficulties in business like the entire Croatian economy. The season in Fužine is tied to the sea, and it is not difficult to fill the hotel with guests during the summer, but it operates 365 days a year, so there are very few guests during the five months. Fužine and the surrounding area have dozens of kilometers of cycling paths, Lake Bajer and Lepenica, the Vrelo cave, the Vrata amusement park, the Roswell cowboy village where the film ‘Winnetou’ was shot, and the Crikvenica Riviera is only half an hour’s drive away, but there is nothing to offer guests in winter as there are no ski resorts. To enrich the tourist offer of Fužine, Kauzlarić bought a carriage in 1998 that still drives tourists around the area, as well as ten bicycles for rent, and Marinko himself operated a boat that took tourists sailing on the lakes of Fužine.
Plans for the New Generation
– Fužine developed along the former Karolina, the first road connecting Pannonian and Adriatic Croatia and once the shortest route to the sea, where travelers rested and stayed for more than 160 years, but until my family seriously engaged in tourism, there were no real tourist facilities. Although we work all year round, the profit is minimal, but I am happy that we can service the loans. Investing in smaller facilities in such a position shows low profitability, and the investment returns only after 25 years – notes Marinko. The second generation of the Kauzlarić family has new plans, which Andrej talks about.
– It is difficult to talk about business plans when they are influenced by the pandemic, but without them, it is impossible to do business, so there are always plans A and B. The idea is for Bitoraj to become a small boutique hotel and to focus more on providing higher quality service and accommodation. We have paid special attention to food preparation technology; the kitchen has a capacity of 500 meals, and we offer dishes from Gorski cuisine so that guests can fully experience the beauty and gastronomy of Gorski Kotar – emphasizes Andrej. In addition, he intends to establish stronger ties with the Asian market, from which more and more guests have been coming to the Bitoraj Hotel in recent years. However, he will continue to pay great attention to individual guests who want to relax in Fužine in the summer and enjoy the freshness, and in the winter, the snow.
{embed_digitalno_izdanje}{/embed_digitalno_izdanje}
