Hunguest Hotels to operate the four-star Hotel Miramar in Opatija, Croatia

2026. március 11.

With the addition of Hotel Miramar, Hunguest Hotels now offers nearly 350 rooms on the Adriatic, the Croatian hotel joins the Montenegrin Hunguest Hotel Sun Resort. With the operation of the hotel, Hunguest Hotels will begin its expansion in Croatia and increase the number of hotels in the chain to 22.

The 110-room, five-building beachfront hotel complex is located in Opatija, next to the Lungomare promenade, a 7-minute walk from the old town. Just five hours by motorway from Budapest, the hotel is now border-free since 2023. Most rooms and suites range from 25 to 80 square metres and offer sea views. The restaurant, which serves a hearty breakfast and dinner, has a 40-seat terrace with sea views, while a bar is open during the day in the 1884 villa.

The hotel has a private beach with sun loungers, a 200 square metre heated, outdoor swimming pool with a swim-out, seawater pool and an indoor freshwater pool. The hotel's wellness area is complete with panoramic saunas.
Hunguest Hotels is gradually introducing its services at the hotel, starting with the Hunguest Hotels Frequent Guest Programme from March, while the hotel chain is preparing for the summer season with a Hungarian-speaking reception staff.
"Sea or thermal, one thing is for sure: Hunguest is the best when it comes to water experiences. From now on, the Croatian coast is also on offer, just a few hours from the Hungarian border. At home on the Adriatic, our Montenegrin hotel is particularly popular with Hungarian guests. We are confident that the Hotel Miramar, with its unique atmosphere, will also be on the bucket list of Hungarian travellers," said Dr. Ádám Détári-Szabó, CEO of Hunguest Hotels.

The hotel complex's beachfront villa is a typical example of the Monarchy's aristocratic holiday landscape: an eclectic, historicist beach villa combining Neo-Renaissance and Neo-Gothic decorative motifs with Mediterranean lightness. The castle-like atmosphere is created by the corner tower, the patio roofline and the articulated façade with openwork balconies, while the arched arcades and the bright pastel colours evoke the sunny, elegant holiday home architecture of turn-of-the-century Abbazia.

A Hungarian past in Abbazia

The history of the hotel began with the seaside villa built in 1884. It was named Villa Meyne after its first owner, János Meyne, a nursery owner and seed merchant from Braunschweig in Sopron. In 1891, a new chapter in the life of the hotel opened: the widow of Count Hugo Henckel von Donnersmarck, Laura Kászonyi, bought a large part of the villa's park and, with the firm of master builder Carlo Conighi, erected a new, representative building, Villa Rosalia, named after her mother. She then bought the building on the seafront from János Meyne. After Laura Kászonyi's death, the property passed to her sister, Baron Sándorné Horváth Kászonyi Gabriella, and her three nephews, Aladar Migl, Árpád and Hugo, who continued to run it under the name Villa Neptun.

Both the Villa Meyne and the Villa Neptun were the dominant social centres of the elegant Abbazia of the turn of the century. Guests included Prince John II of Liechtenstein and Arnold von Siemens, head of the German industrial giant. In its heyday, Villa Neptun was the residence of such notables as Prince Miklós Esterházy and the death of Count Tibor Károlyi, former president of the Hungarian House of Lords, in 1904.
The guest house was frequented by aristocrats and members of the economic elite, mainly from the Monarchy, but it also received travellers from Moscow, Riga and Boston.

Hunguest Hotels currently operates 20 hotels and almost 3,500 rooms in Hungary and is the leading hotel operator in the rural wellness and conference tourism market. The hotel chain has implemented a major development programme for a total of 2,000 rooms between 2020 and 2024, which has become the largest hotel renovation project in the history of Hungarian tourism.