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Valamar introduced "Partnered with Valamar", a collaboration model through which independent four- and five-star hotels and campsites can contract Valamar's sales, marketing and revenue management services, while retaining their own brand and independent management.
At first glance, it's a typical story about economies of scale. Smaller players are gaining access to infrastructure they wouldn't be able to afford on their own. But underneath lies a story that is more interesting for the future of Croatian tourism than distribution alone. This is the story of how a domestic company systematically builds its own sales, data and branding infrastructure, layer by layer.
For years on the hrturizma portal, I have been repeating that digitization in the hotel industry is not a new website, application or another piece of software. Real digitization only begins when the hotel company takes control of its own sales, connects data from different parts of the business, develops a reservation center, CRM and loyalty program and builds internal teams for direct sales, revenue management and guest relations. Everything else can improve a particular process, but does not change the business model.
It is actually a kind of re-digitalization of the hotel industry going back 5 or more years. OTA platforms did at the right time what much of the sector did not know how or did not want to do on its own: they digitized the search, comparison, booking and sale of tourist accommodation. It was easier for hoteliers to leave this part of the business to them than to invest in their own infrastructure. In the short term, it made perfect sense.
The problem arose later. Reservation centers were closing down, direct sales began to be viewed as a cost, and the relationship with the guest increasingly took place through other people's platforms and other people's data. It was only when commissions grew and OTA channels became dominant that the sector realized that it had not only lost a part of the margin. It had lost sales knowledge, infrastructure, its own data, and a direct relationship with the guest.
Such a system does not come back overnight. It was necessary to reopen reservation centers, hire and train people, connect PMS, CRM and revenue systems that were not "talking" to each other, develop loyalty programs, turn the website into a real sales channel and relearn how to convert data into direct sales.
Valamar has been building this process for years, layer by layer. It has developed its own digital identity, reservation center, direct sales, CRM, loyalty, revenue management and internal digital teams. Today, it can develop new products and upgrade the system much faster, because it is no longer starting from scratch. It has its own infrastructure.
/ / / Valamar offers hotels and campsites access to its sales network and loyalty program
This is precisely why I do not see "Partnered with Valamar" as another service added to the portfolio of the largest Croatian tourism company. Valamar is now starting to offer the infrastructure it built for its own needs to other hotels and camps. This is the moment when the hotel company stops growing only through the facilities it owns or manages and starts scaling distribution, knowledge, technology and the relationship with the guest.
At first glance, the model is clear. Independent four- and five-star hotels and campsites gain access to Valamar's sales, marketing and revenue management, while retaining their own brand and independent management. This brings economies of scale, professional revenue management and distribution to a smaller hotel that it would be difficult to build on its own. More realistically, at that level it simply cannot.
But the value is not just in another sales channel. Behind it are the reservation center, sales and marketing teams, CRM, loyalty, data, revenue management, technology and market knowledge that has been built up over the years.
Today, Marriott, Hilton, IHG and other global hotel systems are growing on a similar principle. They don't have to own every hotel in the network because they don't sell the owner just the logo on the front, but distribution, loyalty base, technology, standards and operational knowledge. Through the Series by Marriott, Marriott included more than a hundred hotels and around eight thousand rooms in one go, while maintaining the identity of the regional brands. Hilton through Select by Hilton does something similar.
The difference is that this is the first time a Croatian company is seriously trying to take on this role.
And that, in my opinion, is the real weight of the story. For decades, Croatia has imported international hotel brands, their standards, distribution and franchise models. Now, the possibility of the opposite direction is opening up: for a domestic company to start exporting its own distribution, operational know-how, loyalty system and brand.
Of course, comparing Valamar and Marriott makes no sense in absolute numbers. But the business principle is the same. And this raises a simple question: why would an independent hotel on the Adriatic one day choose Accor and not Valamar, if Valamar can offer it stronger local knowledge, deeper operational integration and services tailored specifically to the Mediterranean hotel industry?
Valamar has an advantage here that global systems do not. Marriott or Hilton will have a hard time developing very local solutions for a few dozen or hundreds of smaller hotels on the Adriatic. Valamar can. That's why Marriott should not be copied. A model should be built that Marriott is not profitable to build.
/ / / Valamar breaks up with direct sales: They reduced OTA channels to only 10%. Impressive
The most important information in the whole story is not how many partners Valamar will include, but the fact that bookings through Booking.com only make up about ten percent of its turnover. This is not only impressive for Croatian conditions, but for any market. This is the best proof of how long-term investment in direct sales pays off.
Booking.com is not the enemy of hoteliers. On the contrary, Booking and other OTA channels digitized tourism when the market needed it and are legitimately charging for their market power. The problem was never that the hotel uses Booking. The problem arises when it no longer knows how to sell without it.
Valamar has been developing web channels, sales call center, CRM, loyalty program, internal digital and sales teams and revenue management for years. The result is not just a lower commission, but something much more important: your own relationship with the guest and your own data.
Direct selling is not a reservation form on the website. Content, marketing, sales team, call center, segmentation, automated communication, personalization, CRM and revenue management must stand behind it. And, most importantly, data.
But data by itself means nothing if you don't have a connected system within which you can use it and turn it into sales. The same goes for AI. Without data and a well-organized infrastructure, AI can't do wonders. With quality data, it becomes an extremely powerful tool.
Most independent hotels can improve their website and increase the share of direct bookings. It cannot build an infrastructure of the level that Valamar has today. This is exactly why "Partnered with Valamar" is market relevant: it does not sell the theory of direct sales to the partner, but a system that has already proven to work.
/ / / IHG in unstoppable growth: After one million rooms, it has crossed the 7.000 hotel mark
Valamar.com annually generates about 250 million euros of reservations, and the loyalty program already has almost 800.000 members. With the fact that about 30 percent of the guests are returnees, it is clear that it is not just about a large marketing base, but about real sales capital.
That's exactly why I've written about the prize draw for Pical Resort on several occasions. On the surface, it was an attractive campaign with a "lifetime" vacation as the main prize. Business-wise, it was one of the largest domestic lead campaigns in tourism. More than 100.000 registrants, among whom more than half are brand new users, is not just a good reach. This is an accelerated construction of the future sales base.
I still think that the campaign was relatively short and that a lot more could have been extracted from the whole concept. But the strategic logic was excellent. Pical was the story that attracted attention and positioned the resort before opening, but the base was not built just for Pical. In fact, at least for Pical. It was built for the entire Valamar ecosystem. "Partnered with Valamar" now extends the same way of thinking to products that are not owned by Valamar.
This brings us to a much bigger story: Valamar no longer monetizes just rooms, camping pitches and its own tourism products.
It begins to monetize distribution, data, technology, standards, knowledge, and organizational capabilities. The nearly million loyalty program members are not just a large database. They are a market. Every new hotel that joins the network gains access to demand that it could never build on its own, and every new hotel simultaneously increases the value of the loyalty program by giving guests more choice. The more hotels there are, the more interesting the network becomes to guests. The more guests and data there are, the more interesting the system becomes to new hotels.
This is a "platform" effect and it is precisely this that Valamar needs to build.
/ / / Why does a user base of 100.000 make perfect sense, even though Pical is a luxury hotel?
The most important word in the statement may not be “partnership” at all, but “franchise".
For partners who want deeper integration, Valamar offers to operate under one of its brands, using products, designs, services, standards and operating systems. This part was mentioned almost in passing, although it is precisely in it that the biggest advantage lies. long-term potential.Global hotel companies have long stopped growing by buying and building each hotel themselves. Their growth is based on franchise and management contracts. The property owner invests capital, while the hotel company brings the brand, distribution, technology, standards and loyalty system and generates revenue through fees.
If hotels under international brands can operate in Croatia, There is no reason why the Croatian brand should not occupy a similar position in the region in the long term.. Valamar has distribution, operational experience, loyalty, revenue management, marketing and organizational infrastructure. Now it is necessary to build a sufficiently wide partner network and a clear scaling model outside of one's own portfolio.
The real step forward would not be to buy a few more hotels in Austria, Slovenia or some third market. A much bigger change would be to include hotels in the Valamar system that will never be owned by it. Then the measure of the company's size is no longer just the number of its own rooms, but the number of rooms that are sold, managed or operated through Valamar's infrastructure.
If I had to guess what Valamar's plan for 2030 looks like, I would say that the number of hotels acquired will no longer be the only important indicator. A much more important question will be how many quality independent hotels in the Adriatic, the Alps and the Mediterranean can enter its distribution, loyalty or franchise system. That is the difference between growing a hotel company and scaling a platform.
Distribution may not even be the most valuable part
The model does not have to be the same for every partner. One hotel can use only distribution and revenue management, another marketing and loyalty, the third operational services, and the fourth a full franchise model. He would have modularity could be the biggest advantage of the system. Once enough hotels come online, much more than sales opens up: joint procurement, education, employee development, sharing of revenue management expertise, benchmarking, AI tools, new product testing, centralized customer support, and even more flexible workforce management between partners.
That is why the additional services that Valamar mentions, such as product development, hotel opening preparation, food and beverage improvements, staff training, procurement and laundry, are not like a footnote or a side option. They are the foundations of the future B2B operational platform for the hotel industry. Valamar does not have to develop everything itself. It can be an integrator of the best solutions and offer them to smaller hoteliers through one relationship and one system.
This is exactly where a space opens up that global chains often cannot or do not want to cover because they are too big and do not have time for "small details". But scaling also carries a classic trap: quality.
“Partnered with Valamar” can eventually become a signal to the guest that the hotel, although not carrying the Valamar brand, meets certain standards of service, sustainability and operational reliability. But it must not be just another logo on the website. It must have clear criteria, regular audits and real value for the guest. The biggest risk, therefore, is not whether there will be interested hoteliers, but whether Valamar can expand the network without diluting quality. A platform is only as good as its weakest partner.
The speed of scaling should not be more important than the trust that the company has built over the years. At the same time, the hotel owner must be able to clearly measure what he has gained: more direct bookings, higher revenues, lower cost of sales or better operational efficiency. Only when the guest receives more reliable quality and the owner demonstrably better results, "Partnered with Valamar" becomes more than a partnership program.
Taken as a whole, this is not an isolated move.
Fly with Valamar showed the ambition to sell a wider part of the trip to the guest, direct sales proved the value of internal digital capacities, and the campaign for Pical how to build a base and relationship with the guest in a planned way. Valfresco was an early proof that Valamar does not think only within the framework of an individual hotel, but of the entire system: one central kitchen, joint procurement, distribution and standardized quality for several facilities. Today, the same business logic is applied to sales, loyalty, revenue management and franchising.
The new model turns all these elements into an infrastructure available to hotels outside Valamar's ownership for the first time. That's why Valamar no longer has to grow only by increasing its own portfolio. It can scale distribution, technology, operational know-how and brand across facilities it does not own.
This is where the transformation begins, where Valamar is building hotel infrastructure.
I have been writing for years that the future of the hotel industry will not be decided only around a swimming pool, restaurant or new star. Decisions will be made about data, distribution and guest relations. "Partnered with Valamar" is the first serious signal that this change is no longer happening only at Marriott, Hilton or IHG.
It's starting to happen in Croatia too. And that's why I think we'll look at this announcement differently in a few years than we do today: as the moment when a Croatian hotel company stopped building just hotels and started building the infrastructure of the Croatian hotel industry.
