Visiting Croatia’s abandoned Penthouse hotel on the Adriatic Coast
On the large island of Krk, which is located in the Adriatic Sea, construction of a brand-new five-star hotel began in the year 1968. Boris Maga, a renowned Croatian architect who a few years later would go on to design the multi-use Poljud Stadium near Split, was the architect behind the design of the hotel, which had the intention of capitalizing on Marshall Tito’s desire to attract wealthy people from the west to spend money in what was then Yugoslavia by constructing a resort hotel. The hotel was designed to capitalize on the desire of Marshall Tito to attract wealthy people from the west.
Bob Guccione, a Sicilian-American businessman, found the idea of the Haludovo Palace Hotel, as it was known at the time, to be appealing. Guccione saw the potential for the hotel to include a casino in its design. Hugh Heffner’s Playboy magazine was a competitor to Guccione’s men’s magazine, Penthouse. Guccione invested $45 million in the venture, which is equivalent to $281 million in 2020, and the result was that in the middle of 1972, when the Haludovo Palace Hotel was officially opened, it contained within it the Penthouse Adriatic Club Casino, which was populated by fifty scantily-dressed Penthouse Pet hostesses whose job it was to After a year had passed, the casino establishment that was a part of the hotel was deemed insolvent and shut down.
The photographs that can be seen above and below were taken of the hotel and casino during its heyday in 1972 and 1973. These photographs, along with the featured magazine covers, are featured on a number of websites that have more in-depth discussions about the hotel; however, I have been unable to find any information regarding the owner of the copyright for the photographs anywhere. If you know who the owner of the copyright is, please let me know so that I can take the appropriate action.
In the beginning, the casino was a success in attracting world leaders and celebrities such as Olof Palme, who was the Prime Minister of Sweden at the time, Silvio Berlusconi, who was a media tycoon in Italy and would later become the Prime Minister of Italy, and Saddam Hussain, who was a rising politician in Iraq. But Guccione did not take into account the fact that Yugoslavian law, which was based on socialist principles, prohibited any Yugoslavian national from gambling in casinos when he was making his plans for the casino. This was an oversight on Guccione’s part. As a result, only wealthy people who were not from Yugoslavia were able to play at the casino, and there were simply not enough wealthy people who came to the casino for it to be profitable. Even the allure of the Pets, which Guccione promoted as the “New soldiers of the Cold War,” as well as the lavish amounts of champagne, caviar, and lobster were not enough to convince them to join.
According to yet another socialist ownership law that was in effect in Yugoslavia, the casino was officially in the hands of a Croatian worker-members assembly company that went by the name Brodokomerc. A contract that Guccione had with Brodokomerc stated that he would receive “three to seven per cent annually from the whole turnover of the Haludovo hotels: in the first three years three per cent and in all other years seven per cent.” This was the basis for Guccione’s return on investment. In the end, he was not awarded anything, and the fact that he was unable to recover his 45 million dollars contributed to the fact that he declared bankruptcy in 2004.
After the casino was shut down, the Haludovu Palace Hotel continued to operate as a luxury hotel until the beginning of the Balkan wars in 1991. After that, it transformed into a refuge for people fleeing the conflict. Caviar, lobster, and champagne were no longer present. In came the destitute, the wounded, and those fleeing from the vicissitudes of war, and by the time Croatia finally declared its independence in 1995, the hotel was a pale shadow of the opulence it once possessed. In addition, a significant number of people who moved in between 1991 and 1995 resisted leaving, which is an understandable sentiment on their part. However, after they had caused some damage, they decided to leave, and the hotel continued to operate as a resort hotel for a few more years before it finally stopped accepting new guests in December of 2002. Since that time, the ownership of the hotel has taken a winding and frequently dubious path, marked by failed business transactions and unfulfilled assurances of financial support in the form of investment capital.
The hotel and the land it stood on are currently owned by a British shell company called Bitmass Limited. This company has links with Ara Abramyan, an Armenian-Russian businessman, through another company. Mr. Abramyan was previously the majority owner of the hotel and the land it stood on. It is difficult to speculate on what the future holds for the hotel. It is currently in a state of disrepair and danger while occupying a prime location with a view of the Adriatic Sea, and it is highly unlikely that it will ever be brought back to a habitable state.
During our time on Krk, we stayed at the Haludovo Palace Hotel.
The fact that the Haludovo Palace Hotel is very well concealed was the first thing that we observed about it. If you were to approach it along the narrow promenade that sits between the hotel and the water, you probably wouldn’t notice it was there unless you were specifically looking for it. It was an odd experience, having just entered the grounds of the hotel via this route, to peer back through the vegetation at passing holidaymakers as they strolled along this attractive bit of coastline, unaware of the hotel’s existence. The entire beachfront side of the hotel is engulfed by large trees and other overgrown vegetation.
