Irundo acquired Sunny Travel from Novalja and increased its portfolio to more than 700 properties
Irundo continues the accelerated consolidation of the Croatian property management market for short-term tourist rentals. After acquiring Split-based Sun Spalato in June, the company also acquired Sunny Travel at the beginning of September, an agency focused on Novalja and the wider area of the island of Pag. According to information published by Irundo regarding the transaction, Sunny Travel manages more than 200 short-term rental properties and generates more than two million euros in annual revenue. Following this acquisition, Irundo states that it manages more than 700 properties in Croatia, primarily on the coast and in Zagreb. This continues a growth strategy that no longer relies solely on organic expansion, but also on acquiring local property managers with an already established portfolio of owners and accommodation units.
The company has set a target of approaching the threshold of 1,000 units under management by the end of 2026. This means that, following two major acquisitions this year, it will need to continue attracting new owners, expanding existing local partnerships or completing additional acquisitions during the remaining months. Value is created not only through the number of apartments and holiday homes, but also through centralized management of pricing, reservations, guest communication, maintenance, cleaning, administration and owner reporting. This type of operational infrastructure is precisely one of the reasons why larger short-term rental management platforms can acquire smaller local agencies while retaining their knowledge of the destination and relationships with owners.
Irundo's second major acquisition in Croatia during 2026
The acquisition of Sunny Travel comes less than three months after Irundo's acquisition of Sun Spalato, an established accommodation manager in the wider Split area. In June, following that transaction, Irundo announced that it managed more than 500 units, primarily in Dalmatia, Istria and Zagreb, and that those units had generated around 180,000 tourist overnight stays during the previous year. Law firm BDV, which advised Renters and Irundo in that transaction, also announced that the acquisition of Sun Spalato was Irundo's first acquisition after joining the Renters group and that the company's goal was to reach 1,000 units in Croatia by the end of the year.
The Sunny Travel acquisition therefore shows that the announced consolidation plan has not remained merely a strategic announcement. Sunny Travel brings more than 200 units in a market where local operational knowledge is particularly important because of strong seasonality, the large share of privately owned accommodation and highly variable demand throughout the year. Novalja and the island of Pag have a specific tourism structure in which summer demand is concentrated within a relatively short period, while accommodation managers must simultaneously coordinate prices, availability, cleaning, maintenance and communication with a large number of guests. For a larger group, this means entering the destination through an existing operational network, while for the local agency it provides access to a broader technological and organizational system.
Goran Pejić, founder of Sunny Travel, emphasized in the announcement regarding the transaction that his company remains focused on Novalja and Pag. According to him, joining Irundo provides access to the technology, operational platform and expertise of a group that manages thousands of accommodation units. Pejić expects that such support will enable further improvements in service quality and owners' revenue. For the market, it is also important that the acquisition model does not necessarily mean the disappearance of local knowledge: the value of such agencies lies precisely in their familiarity with owners, the destination and operational specifics that are difficult to replicate centrally.
Renters acquired Irundo in 2025 and retained its brand
Irundo's current strategy is connected with the change in ownership structure that took place in 2025. Polish operator Renters acquired Irundo in October 2025, when it was announced that the Croatian company would continue operating under its existing brand and with its existing team. At the time of the transaction, Hina reported that Renters, a company in the portfolio of private equity fund Enterprise Investors, had acquired the Croatian apartment manager following its earlier expansion into the Bulgarian market. BDV stated at the time that Irundo, founded in 2011, managed more than 300 apartments in several Croatian destinations and that joining forces with Renters was expected to support further expansion.
Enterprise Investors states on its official website that it invested in Renters in 2023 and holds a 76.3 percent stake through the PEF VIII fund. According to the same source, Renters was founded in 2018 as a holiday apartment operator in the Polish city of Świnoujście and developed into a major short-term rental manager in Poland and Central and Eastern Europe. For Irundo, joining such a group meant access to capital, technology and processes that facilitate accelerated expansion.
The September announcement regarding Sunny Travel states that the Renters group manages more than 7,000 short-term rental units in the region. This figure comes from the company's communications and demonstrates the scale of the platform within which Irundo now operates. Following the latest acquisition, Irundo itself exceeds 700 units in Croatia, meaning that in less than a year since joining Renters it has significantly increased its domestic portfolio. If it achieves its plan of 1,000 units by the end of 2026, the portfolio would be more than three times larger than the level of just over 300 apartments mentioned at the time of the transaction with Renters in October 2025.
The focus is shifting from accommodation administration to revenue, quality and guest experience
Irundo CEO Tomislav Zovko believes that the Croatian short-term rental market is entering a new phase. In his interpretation, it is no longer sufficient simply to open sales channels, manage the reservation calendar and organize guest arrivals. Dynamic pricing, service standardization, maintaining quality across a large number of units, regulatory compliance, cost control and the ability to continuously demonstrate financial results to the owner are becoming increasingly important. This shift favors larger professional managers because they can spread the costs of technology, analytics, customer support and operational teams across a larger portfolio.
Irundo states that it uses its own AI system for some management and operational tasks, as well as smart pricing management tools. The company also claims that units under its management receive above-average guest ratings and that their seasonal occupancy is twice the average of the destinations. These figures should be viewed as indicators published by the company itself, but they clearly reveal the direction of its business model: the goal is not merely to increase the number of properties, but to centrally optimize revenue, quality and operational efficiency. In this model, local teams remain important for physical work at the destination, while a larger portion of planning, analytics and management can be standardized at the level of the broader network.
This approach also reflects changing owner expectations. An owner who hires a professional manager increasingly seeks not merely administrative intermediation, but a comprehensive service covering pricing, distribution across sales channels, guest communication, check-in and check-out, cleaning, interventions, maintenance, financial reporting and regulatory monitoring. The more complex the regulatory system becomes and the higher labor and maintenance costs rise, the more the value of such a service depends on the manager's ability to show the owner a measurable result after all costs, rather than merely a high gross nightly rate.
The tourism market remains large, but 2026 results show how important it is to adapt to demand
The broader tourism context also explains why professional management is becoming more important. According to data from the Ministry of Tourism and Sport's eVisitor system, from the beginning of 2026 through the end of July Croatia recorded 12.4 million arrivals and 59.1 million overnight stays, around one percent more than in the same period of 2025. July alone brought 4.7 million arrivals and 29.6 million overnight stays, with arrivals increasing by 2.5 percent and overnight stays by one percent year on year. These figures include commercial and non-commercial accommodation as well as nautical charter and show that overall demand remains at a very high level, but also that growth is not strong enough for every property to automatically expect higher occupancy or higher prices.
For June, the latest month for which a regular monthly release on commercial accommodation was available on September 8, the Croatian Bureau of Statistics recorded 3.0 million arrivals and 13.5 million overnight stays. Compared with June 2025, arrivals were 6.6 percent lower and overnight stays 6.1 percent lower, although across the entire first half of 2026 the number of arrivals and overnight stays was 0.5 percent higher than a year earlier. The difference between individual months shows how sensitive the season can be to travel patterns, prices, weather and geopolitical circumstances, as well as guest behavior. In precisely such an environment, flexible pricing and active availability management become more important than relying on a fixed seasonal price list.
For companies such as Irundo, this creates room for growth, but also increases responsibility. A larger portfolio brings more data, but at the same time increases the complexity of daily operations. Cleaning, maintenance, responses to guest problems and quality control cannot be fully automated. Consolidation therefore makes sense only if portfolio growth is accompanied by growth in local teams, quality control and the capacity to resolve problems on the ground.
Short-term rental regulation is becoming more demanding
Another major driver of professionalization is regulation. European Union Regulation 2024/1028 on the collection and sharing of data relating to short-term accommodation rental services has applied since May 20, 2026. The Regulation establishes a framework for registration procedures and data exchange between competent authorities and online platforms, but the specific national procedures depend on the implementation framework of each Member State. In May, the Croatian Ministry of Tourism and Sport specifically warned that at that time there was still no obligation to obtain a registration number for advertising on online platforms and that this obligation in Croatia was expected to apply from the beginning of 2027, following the adoption of the new Hospitality and Catering Industry Act and determination of the exact date.
In June 2026, the Government submitted a proposal for a new Hospitality and Catering Industry Act to Parliament. According to the Ministry's explanation, one of the main objectives is to establish a single registration system for accommodation providers and a mandatory registration number for rooms, apartments and holiday homes advertised through digital platforms. The system is intended to enable more efficient data exchange and make it more difficult to advertise unregistered properties. For owners and managers, this means that proper records, accurate information about each unit and timely monitoring of regulatory changes will become even more important.
Regulatory pressure is not limited to the European registration system. Croatian regulations have already introduced additional requirements for short-term rentals in multi-apartment and mixed residential-commercial buildings. In a decision published in August 2026, the Constitutional Court recalled that the Building Management and Maintenance Act requires prior written consent from a two-thirds majority of co-owners for the use of an apartment for short-term rental, together with the consent of all immediate neighbors whose walls, floors or ceilings adjoin that apartment. In the same proceedings, the Court rejected a request to review the constitutionality of Article 30.a of the Hospitality and Catering Industry Act and did not accept proposals to initiate proceedings concerning related provisions.
Such regulatory developments further change the economics of managing private accommodation. An owner must monitor not only demand and prices, but also the property's legal status, local decisions, obligations toward co-owners, tax and administrative requirements and the future registration system for advertising on platforms. For professional managers, this becomes part of the service and a potential competitive advantage, but also an area where an error can have significant consequences for a large number of clients at once.
Consolidation is only entering a more visible phase
By acquiring Sun Spalato and Sunny Travel, Irundo has demonstrated within just a few months an expansion model that could become more common in the fragmented tourist rental market. Smaller local agencies have relationships with owners, operational experience and knowledge of the destination, while larger groups bring capital, centralized technology, analytics, standardized processes and the ability to spread costs across a larger number of units. When these two elements are successfully combined, a local agency can continue operating in its area but with infrastructure that would be more expensive or more difficult for it to access independently.
For Irundo, the key question is whether it can grow from more than 700 to the planned 1,000 units without a decline in service quality. The company announces further strengthening of its operational team, transparent reporting to owners, analytics and regulatory compliance. If it manages to retain the local expertise of the acquired agencies, acquisitions can accelerate expansion without the lengthy process of building a portfolio from scratch. If the operational structure fails to keep pace with the rate of growth, areas such as maintenance, cleaning and guest support could become bottlenecks.
Following the transaction, Sunny Travel remains focused on Novalja and Pag, while Irundo gains a stronger presence in another important part of the Croatian coast. For property owners, the most important indicator of success will not be the size of the group itself, but the combination of occupancy, generated revenue, costs, maintenance quality, guest satisfaction and assurance that the property complies with the rules. In that sense, the acquisition of Sunny Travel is not merely an increase in the number of units under one manager, but another signal that Croatia's short-term rental market is rapidly shifting toward larger, technologically and operationally integrated systems.
Sources:
- Forbes Hrvatska – report on the acquisition of Sunny Travel, Irundo's portfolio, revenue and plans (link)
- Poslovni dnevnik – data on Sunny Travel, statements by Tomislav Zovko and Goran Pejić and the plan to grow to 1,000 units (link)
- BDV – data on the acquisition of Sun Spalato and Irundo's expansion after joining Renters (link)
- HRT / Hina – data on Renters' acquisition of Irundo in October 2025 and the continuation of operations under the existing brand (link)
- Enterprise Investors – data on the investment in Renters, ownership stake and the group's business model (link)
- Ministry of Tourism and Sport – official information on the future registration number for short-term rentals in Croatia (link)
- EUR-Lex – Regulation (EU) 2024/1028 and the date from which it applies (link)
- Official Gazette / Constitutional Court of the Republic of Croatia – decision and ruling of July 14, 2026 on provisions related to short-term rentals (link)
- Ministry of Tourism and Sport – eVisitor system data for July and the first seven months of 2026 (link)
- Croatian Bureau of Statistics – tourist arrivals and overnight stays in commercial accommodation in June and the first half of 2026 (link)