Delta Real Estate plans to spend around half a billion euro in real estate development
Delta Real Estate Group is a leading company in the real estate segment that operates in the wider region with a focus on Serbia, Montenegro and Slovenia. Its portfolio includes shopping malls, retail parks, hotels as well as retail, office and residential spaces. We talked to Angelina Nekić, who was appointed the CEO of the Delta Real Estate Group in 2021, about the consequences that the coronavirus has had on business, but also about the company’s future goals.
Delta Real Estate operates across the region in the real estate segment. How has the coronavirus pandemic affected the business and what results did you achieve in 2020?
The Covid-19 pandemic has seriously shaken the global real estate market, especially the hotel industry, so in that sense, Delta Real Estate was not an exception. However, thanks to portfolio diversification and good management during the crisis, we ended 2020 with a profit. In the hotel segment, we recorded a significant loss for understandable reasons. For example, the InterContinental Hotel in Ljubljana was closed due to measures implemented by the Slovenian government. We closed HolidayInn in Belgrade ourselves in order to reduce costs. Only the Crowne Plaza Hotel Belgrade was open all the time, but with a rather modest occupancy. The situation has been better in our shopping mall segment – Delta Planet Banja Luka quickly returned to the level before the lockdown, and Delta Planet Varna is following suit but at a slightly slower pace. The crisis has had the least impact on our office premises business. It has been proven time and time again that people are social beings and that, despite all the new tools that allow remote work, there is a need for teams to come together and work together.
The pandemic has changed the way we work in many areas of society and has created new trends. How did it affect your industry and business?
The pandemic has forced us to be much more flexible, to make faster decisions and to think about further portfolio diversification. Very few people could have imagined a phenomenon that would affect certain branches of business in this way as the SARS-COV2 virus did. That is why all our projects that started before the pandemic underwent certain changes and received the seal of the coronavirus, so to speak.
The new Delta House office building is designed in line with the latest global standards and principles of green construction. Could you elaborate on that?
Delta House, the future headquarters of Delta Holding, will be the state-of-the-art building in Belgrade in terms of its technological solutions, environmental progress, but above all, in the way, it treats its tenants.
Delta House is designed following the principles of green construction and will be LEED certified. Hollow slabs filled with recycled plastic balls were used in the construction, which contributes to the reduction of CO2 emissions. The building also has rainwater collection tanks, and the collected water is later used as technical water.
“Delta House will be officially opened in the second quarter of this year”
Interior comfort is at the highest level, and we paid special attention to lighting and air quality because this is an environment in which people will spend their entire working day. Bipolar ionizers are placed on the air conditioning chambers, which are an additional means of providing healthier and cleaner air, devoid of viruses and bacteria. The facility is fully automated, which allows monitoring of all important parameters, such as brightness, air quality and others.
Construction work is going at the planned pace, despite taking place during the pandemic. Delta House will be officially opened in the second quarter of this year.
You have been recently appointed the CEO of Delta Real Estate, one of the leading regional real estate companies. What are your plans for the company’s further development?
The plans are very ambitious because Delta Real Estate plans to spend around half a billion euro in real estate development in the next few years. This makes us one of the largest, if not the largest investor in this part of Europe. I look forward to the challenge of coordinating such demanding projects, not only in terms of finances but also in terms of organization, planning and human resources.
During this investment cycle, we plan to build an InterContinental Hotel in Novi Beograd with two office buildings, then a building in downtown Belgrade (in Despot Stefan Street), as well as a shopping mall on Autokomanda. We are planning further regional expansion by opening another hotel in Ljubljana and a retail concept store in Sarajevo. We are also interested in the markets of Croatia, Macedonia and Albania. We have been observing and analyzing opportunities and it won’t come as a surprise if we enter a new market soon.