Valamar Hotels & Resorts, the largest Croatian hotel company, managing 38 tourist facilities in four leading Adriatic coast destinations, has published sales results for the previous year and announced new investments for business expansion.
"This has been a very successful year for Valamar. We have achieved an increase in sales income of 14% compared to previous year, with 80% of hotel occupancy level. We are preparing new capital investments of 20 million $ intended for human resources, Valamar brand expansion, consolidation and sales increase," said Mr. Zrinko Kamber, a member of the Valamar Board, at the annual convention of Valamar Group held in the hotel Dubrovnik President.
Valamar has also announced further investments in existing facilities, namely Hotel Koralj in Krk and Hotel Luna in Poreč, which will be improved by new amenities and go through marketing repositioning. Those resorts will also get the "Valamar" brand added to their names.
The most significant investment is related to construction continuation of the Valamar Lacroma Resort, the largest congress hotel in Dubrovnik, which will be opened in 2009. This is a 50 million $ project for the high-class hotel which will have 400 luxury rooms and suits, a multifunctional hall with thousand seats, wellness and business centre, pools, restaurants, bars and other facilities and programmes of the highest quality.
The chairman of the Valamar Group Board Peter Fuchs emphasised the importance of human resources investments:
"Next year, Valamar will invest 1.6 million $ in human resources, including education for more than 1300 employees. Besides that we have granted scholarships for 45 students and established Valamar Academy which gave us three new managers and one assistant manager. We expect that further development programmes for new generations of attendants will produce 11 managers and 20 department managers," Mr. Fuchs said.
Besides the investments in new objects, human resources and facilities, Valamar emphasises the trend of direct sales increase, in particular, online reservations through their website www.valamar.com, which has had more than 4 million visitors this year.
Average number of visitors per day is 12000, which increases up to 30000 in the peak of the season; this is the maximal number of visits recorded as of 10 July.
The website visitors came from 178 countries, but more than half of them were from Italy (33%) and Germany (18%), followed by Austria (10%), Croatia (9%), Slovenia (6%) and Great Britain (3%)...
Investments in internet, as a direct marketing and sales channel, are regarded as very important, as this channel has been progressively growing every year.
"This year's results are above all expectations so I can safely say that we have considerably exceeded the a priori set high scale. From the total number of this year's reservations, 27% have been made via direct sales, whereas the internet plays an important role here. We have invested in numerous targeted forms of internet marketing, from advertising on highly visited internet portals on targeted markets, over marketing on search engines, all up to implementation of new forms of market communication - informative blogs in five languages that inform our visitors on events and other interesting facts connected to our destinations," says Zeljko Kukurin, director of direct sales and marketing in Valamar.
Beside the direct effects of online booking, Valamar points out that 60% of their guests use internet when planning their vacation, so that the influence of internet in marketing and sales stretches beyond the framework of the mentioned figures.
"In 2004 we started with serious investments in this channel, with new web sites and a completely automated online booking system that has the option of online payment for all our hotels and campsites. Last year we redirected the hotel and apartment offer to web site http://www.valamar.com, and campsites to http://www.camping-adriatic.com, whereas we have continued the permanent online marketing activities," says Franko Rados, executive informatics e-business in Valamar.
In Valamar they also point out that they expect a continual increase of visits in the following yeart as well as navigating towards new markets.
Valamar Hotels and Resorts is the leading Croatian hospitality management company, operates 38 properties (21 hotels, 8 apartment villages and 9 campsites) in four Croatian destinations (Poreč, Dubrovnik, Rabac and Krk) is the market leader in this segment.
Contact:
Mario Slavic
Online Marketing Manager
Valamar Hotels and Resorts
email : mario.slavic@valamar.com