Natura-Turist d.o.o. the agency with excellent results
Natura-Turist d.o.o. is a travel agency located near the Plitvice Lakes National Park. The task of this travel agency is primarily the care of the guest from the beginning of his journey to the end. They take care of transfers, food, accommodation and also animation.
Željka Brozović is director of Natura-Turist d.o.o. In co-operation with her now a former husband and business partner, she founded the Natura Turist Plitvice Lakes Family Company and started hiring in tourism. In twelve years of work they have achieved excellent results, work stability, and employ a few people indefinitely, which Mrs Željka says in the insecure business market.
Aside from providing the guest with a top-quality stay, the goal of this agency is to keep the guest as long as possible and to familiarize him with the rest of Lika's destination. Natura-Turist d.o.o. is a member of the Lika Destination Cluster, but this agency differs from others, what their guests most often come to and what they plan in the future we asked Mrs. Željko. What has revealed everything to us reads below:
1. Tell us something about yourself, what do you do and what does your offer cover?
We are a tourist agency Natura-Turist d.o.o. which is located in Korenica and we are dealing exclusively with receptive tourism in the whole area of Lika.
2. Since when did you do this job and how did you come up with the idea of dealing with this job?
The agency is twelve years old and literally we started from scratch, without the experience and the adequate knowledge, but we were ready to learn and work on it all through this year.
3. What services are most sought after by visitors?
We must honestly admit that inquiries are mostly related to NP Plitvice Lakes and that is what attracted all the guests to our region first, although we consider that Lika has a lot more to offer than the Park itself. We were initially trying to offer other content, but it was really a "fight with windmills". Even Lika and her residents did not recognize their potential until a couple of years ago, and all their eyes were exclusively in Plitvice. Now things have finally moved forward and the offer is expanding, and accordingly. The Agency can not offer the whole region, it needs associates and partners (other bidders).
4. What do you think is your advantage over the competition?
Our advantage is solely because we are constantly trying to learn, develop, and adapt.
5. How many employees do you have?
The agency currently has six people indefinitely employed. These are people of different ages, from the age of nine, over the age of thirty to those over 50. This is very important for a job in tourism because we work with different types of people who have their own desires, habits and needs and more different life experiences are excellent for working with different people. How are they employed indefinitely? Well, we work all the winter on ideas and business development. In the winter we imagine what we want to achieve this year and then we are trying to implement it. (New Products, New Market, New Partners). We are also exploring our region's offer, which has emerged again and how to incorporate it into our package deals.
6. Do you engage more than one group or individual? Where do they come from and whose age groups most often come from?
For now, we have far more groups because we have been in such a market, but we have more and more individual guests and small groups (up to 15 people) who are far more difficult to reach and need to offer their product before they travel to Croatia. Our goal is to persuade them to take at least three days for their vacation in Croatia and visit more than Plitvice itself.
7. What are their comments? What do they like most, do they have any objections?
Guest reactions are excellent. Almost every day they receive praise for the experiences and knowledge they have acquired while staying in our area. We provide them with experiences and knowledge related to the nature and culture of our area, and for that reason our constant education of our employees is obligatory. The comments are mostly related to the lack of supply and the lack of potential that they see with us. The most common question is: Where are you people? Too much space, nowhere in the population. We interpret them through history by explaining the specificity of our space around the East and the West, wars and migrations that have affected these areas.
8. Do guests and other destinations in Lika are questioned? Which are you most recommended for?
Of course they are being questioned. We are obliged to recommend the Memorial Center "Nikola Tesla" Smiljan, the Gacka River and the Grabovača Cave Park, if they did not take any of our packages. We have to send them back to zip line and kayaks on the Gacka River.
9. How long do guests stay longer?
Unfortunately, it is still two days or one night. This is what we want to change and what we are doing intellectually, especially the last four years.
10. Have you done an EU project, can you tell us something more about what it is about?
Exactly. We conducted the project Increasing the competitiveness of the company Natura-Turist d.o.o. investing in business process informatization and the maximum amount of support is approved. The goal was to invest in enterprise development, speed up work processes, informatise them, and thus increase employee performance in order to spend time on finding new customers, which is really profligate. We have more time to devote ourselves to marketing and creating new products, and after that we have increased the number of employees because it has reflected on the growth of the business.
11. Given the experience of the past, can you say whether Lika is a suitable tourist destination?
We consider that Lika, apart from the City of Zagreb, has the best potential for tourism as a continental region. Unsustainable nature as people have forgotten. Lika is wherever she goes, or she can be by the way. What we all have to do is this active tourism that is increasingly sought because a modern tourist wants to explore, experience new experiences, meet people, the region, culture, but also himself.
12. What are your plans for the future, can we expect to expand the offer?
Our offer is rich and we are constantly working on it. We have already done a couple of team bildings and we have received great praise for that part of the job. We are doing individualized packages for guests who tell us what they are interested in from our ads, and then we get their packages. Last year, we started hiking tours, we developed such two offers that sparked great interest and we had to work on expanding our offer this year. The rule is that we do everything ourselves to evaluate the possibility of performance and time, and then we will agree on the package.
This year, we will include a couple of new partners and clubs (bicycling) in the package arrangement. We are waiting for a nice time to try the packages we have designed.
Our goal is certainly DMK specialization and we are introducing ISO quality management system. We sincerely hope that our investment in marketing and people will result in all our partners and guests being more satisfied.
