This Season Signals the Collapse of the Beloved ‘zimmer frei’ Concept

Every year, someone who knows someone renting apartments and whose reservation flow is not favorable before the main tourist season warns about problems for Croatian tourism. This year is no exception. In recent weeks, there has been talk of seasonal gaps, weaker bookings for July and August, mostly in private accommodation. On social media, readers are posting comments that they no longer read articles about tourism in the pre-season. Nor can anyone blame them. Besides the fact that the average reader is already dizzy from counting tourists and vehicles on the roads (and the counting has just begun), in the fall, everything ends with a story about a record tourist season, and the landlord who complained signs a contract to buy an apartment in the metropolis.

However, this year, the alarm has truly gone off, not because of the number of guests but the possibility that this will be a decisive season in which the rental (non) logic will finally backfire. For years, tourism experts have warned about the excessive amount of family accommodation being built without planning and control, with minimal tax burdens, and the Strategy for the Sustainability of Croatian Tourism seems to be arriving too late. In the past year, we have increased capacities in private accommodation by 63,000 new beds, if we sum up commercial and non-commercial accommodation in households. In two years, the number of beds has grown by a staggering 126,000.

– It is often stated in public that private accommodation makes up 60 percent of the total accommodation structure; however, this data is not accurate as it does not include non-commercial accommodation where ‘friends and relatives’ sleep, which is used for commercial purposes in most cases. I do not even include the gray economy here. When we sum these two segments, we find that out of 1.8 million accommodation units, 1.4 million fall under family accommodation, which is 77 percent of all capacities in Croatia. Even more concerning is that over 85 percent of private accommodation is rated two and three stars. Higher category capacities are growing, but too slowly, says Emanuel Tutek, a partner at the consulting firm BlueRock Consulting.

If we add this year’s increase in apartment prices by an average of 20 percent, as the landlords themselves admit, we arrive at a possible answer to the filling problems. More capacities alongside higher prices do not follow economic logic, especially when in certain parts of tourist regions we do not have such a significant jump in demand.

Yet, the numbers are generally very good, if we are to believe the eVisitor statistics, which say that in the first five months we had 30 percent more arrivals and 23 percent more overnight stays than last year. It is hard to believe that in the upcoming strongest part of the year, things will go downhill. However, it should also be taken into account that after a long time, we have some new activities in the pre-season in some destinations (for example, sports tourism in Istria), which have yielded results, so consequently, we can expect a lower number of arrivals in the main season in the long term, which is also a long-discussed goal of tourism policy creators.

For years, it has been shown that those who invest in the quality of accommodation and service always find a buyer in the market, even if they charge a thousand euros per night. However, a guest who paid a certain price one year and is asked to pay 20 percent more the next year, without any change in quality and infrastructure, has all possible arguments for booking accommodation in another country. They are not interested in the fact that the cleaner has become more expensive for the landlord or the utilities. Because when a guest adds the higher accommodation price to the more expensive food in stores and restaurants, more expensive excursions, and transportation, their vacation in Croatia becomes at least 50 percent more expensive than in previous years.

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