How many years of experience do you have as a host/hotelier?
We have been providing household renting services for 15 years now. First, we started by building a house with apartments, and after that we realized that vacation homes offer greater potential, so we invested our capital in that type of accommodation facility.
Why did you choose to work in hospitality?
By chance! Namely, in Dalmatia region in Croatia, whoever had a spare room was engaged in providing household services (the official name for ‘Zimmer frei’). After a certain period of time with renting rooms, most small accommodation renters switched to renting apartments.
What are the biggest challenges?
Definitely an unstable geopolitical situation – it’s enough that a war ecsales in the neighborhood, and you never get back all the invested capital.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to influence such things, which gives additional uncertainty for further investment – is it in improving the hosting service or investing in the quality of accommodation.
What would you recommend to future hoteliers and our clients?
Whoever wants to engage in accommodation renting, that should be at a very professional level where a lot of effort, time and resources must be invested in order to see results in the long run.
In our experience, amateur tourism does not bring much income, and at the same time creates a bad image of Croatian tourism in the media. Therefore, at least from our experience, we suggest that people deal with renting accommodation either semi-professionally or professionally. 🙂