The first of a total of four castings for hostesses for the 23rd ATP Vegeta Croatia Open was held in the luxurious Lexus showroom in Zagreb. Under the watchful eye of already experienced Daniel Bilic of Soundset Radio, who also hosted the event last year, the jury consisting of Antonija Mandic, Manuel Strlek, Hrvoje Kovacevic and Mario Sarlija chose girls from Zagreb and the neighbouring area. Another three castings will be held in Osijek, Rijeka and Pula. There will be 150 hostesses from the entire region in Umag this year.

The interest is great this year, too, and more than 600 applications for ATP hostesses have been received by now. Just as during the previous years, the most applications come from Slavonija, Zagreb and Istria, but girls from Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina apply as well. The competition will be opened by June 1, 2012.

Some of the hostesses have already become ambassadors of the Umag tournament, as they have been coming to Umag four or more years in a row, and the conditions they have to meet are, above all, good communications skills, responsibility and foreign language skills. Since the ATP Vegeta Croatia Open is not just a sports tournament, but also one of the leading Croatian social events with rich accompanying programme, the task of hostesses, save the responsible functions in some ten posts, is also to promote Umag, Istria and Croatia among numerous visitors.

Last year, a total of 613 reports were aired for an audience of nearly 700 million viewers, and hostesses from Umag often appeared in this news. The ATP, which presents the story about hostesses through its media to the world, also shows great interest each year.

The 23rd ATP Vegeta Croatia Open will be held from July 5 to July 15, 2012, and in that period, Umag will once again become a central point of one of the most significant social events in Croatia and an unavoidable central point of tennis, beauty, fun, socializing and experience of Istrian flavours and scents.