Of all economic sectors, tourism and hospitality definitely had the most respectable growth last year. Both revenues and profits of companies grew mostly by more than 100 percent. If it hadn’t been a comeback year after the devastating 2020, when tourism was ‘frozen’ due to the pandemic, it would have been a business miracle. Leaders of Croatian hospitality reported million-dollar losses and up to 69 percent drop in revenue compared to 2019. Then, in July 2021, the situation completely turned around.
It can be said that hoteliers successfully weathered the toughest moments of the pandemic and that they clearly utilized government measures for job preservation well and rationally, without lowering quality standards. Although last year tourist demand, looking at individual markets, changed (there were still many fewer air guests, southern destinations were in a worse position, and there was still no return of groups and allotments from distant markets), hotels managed to emerge from the greatest adversity in the recent history of tourism, and their flagships were camps that still lead in demand even after the pandemic. Leading tourism companies managed to break the billion kuna revenue barrier again last year, something they could only dream of the year before.
Last year, due to revenue losses in 2020, many tourism companies fell off the list of the 1000 largest, however, this year there are 24 in the Hotels and Restaurants category that achieved just over nine billion kuna in revenue, which is an increase of 95 percent. This is the largest sectoral growth in a year, which speaks volumes about how dramatic the decline was in 2020. Their profit last year amounted to 1.2 billion kuna, which is an increase of 177 percent compared to 2020.
Of the 24 companies, 11 had revenue growth greater than 100 percent, but there are also companies that recorded modest growth of about 20 to 30 percent compared to the catastrophic 2020.
Some tourism companies that were at a minimum of open capacities in 2020 did not operate with 100 percent of their offer last year either. Namely, in the tourism sector, market signals are awaited until the last minute, and when it became clear at the beginning of July that demand exceeded all expectations and that the season would be very successful, many hoteliers found themselves in a ‘grape that has not been harvested’ because they did not timely engage seasonal labor, so they operated with reduced capacity.
Unlike hoteliers, travel agencies did not have a significant ‘come back’ last year because the consequences of the pandemic are still felt today, and the loss of 80 percent of revenue from 2020 extended into 2021. In previous years, we had at least five agencies among the 1000 largest companies, but this year only one remained, the German destination management company Meeting Point Croatia. For years, the largest Croatian tour operator Uniline was in first place, which did not make it to the list this year; however, according to published results, the company did manage to exit the loss last year and ended the year in the black. Specifically, the corona ‘ate’ about 400 percent of Uniline’s revenue, so in 2019, that agency achieved 366 million kuna, and in 2020, only 83. Last year, Uniline exceeded 100 million kuna in revenue and turned eight million kuna in losses into almost the same amount in profit.
