May 25 - Meliá Hotels International has kept its traditional appointment with Fitur, in a special edition of the travel trade fair this year which is still affected by the impact of the pandemic. The company’s presence is a sign of its confidence in the future and capacity to recover and emerge even stronger from the crisis. The leading hotel company in Spain has already begun to reopen its larger resort hotels, which along with the reactivation of its growth is seen as a clear sign of recovery.

 

As Gabriel Escarrer, Vice President and CEO of the company, announced this morning at Fitur, “so far in 2021 we have already signed up 11 new hotels in Asia and the Mediterranean, demonstrating the strength of the company and the confidence of the industry in our business model at a key time for the industry, in which we are positioning ourselves as a global benchmark and clear leader of the resort and “bleisure" (business + leisure) hotel industry".

 

A key new feature is the Affiliated by Meliá brand created by the company in 2020, a new franchise model for independent hotels that allows them to keep their own identity and operating model while also receiving access to the Meliá sales and distribution platform and its 14 million loyal customers, as well as a wide range of hotel management services. According to Escarrer, “with everything that the industry is currently going through, the strength of our melia.com and MeliáPRO digital channels, together with our MeliáRewards loyalty programme, will allow independent hotels to enhance their sales capacity and respond to the emerging trends in digital consumption".

 

The company has added seven hotels in 2021 under the new model, including the recently announced Playa Esperanza Resort, an iconic hotel on the north coast of Mallorca, and another hotel in Benidorm (Halley Apartments) - two Spanish destinations that Meliá knows very well and that will already be operating under the new model from this month onwards.

 

Three new hotels in Malta (Mistral, Constance and Ratton) scheduled to be completed in 2023 have also already joined the Affiliated by Meliá portfolio, along with two hotels in Crete (Hotel Blue Sea Beach, which will open in 2022) and one in Rhodes (Hotel Cosmopolitan, open from May this year), allowing the company to return to the Greek islands.

 

The company has also announced another new project in Crete, this time under the Sol by Meliá brand and scheduled for 2022, as well as two more new hotels for the Meliá Hotels & Resorts brand in Sicily: Meliá Taormina and Meliá Siracusa. Both hotels are already under construction and are expected to open in 2023.

 

All of these new projects show the group’s fondness for the Mediterranean, one of its natural growth markets and a place where it has a clear market leadership position. The company’s other major growth area is Asia Pacific, where it currently has 30% of all the hotels pending opening. In China, Meliá announced in April the addition of its third hotel in Xian, the INNSiDE Xian Qinhan (which will open in 2025), and the company already has a dozen hotels in the country.

 

On the verge of recovery

Meliá Hotels International's participation in Fitur is also a sign of its confidence in the recovery of tourism in Spain this summer, confirmed by the fact that it expects to open around 70% of its hotels for the season. Escarrer referred to the “green shoots" of recovery in hotel demand, noting that in the last week the company's booking numbers were already at 55% of the numbers achieved in 2019. "The best news is that bookings from the domestic market for Spanish resort destinations, encouraged by the end of the State of Emergency, are already above 2019 levels," said Escarrer, who also mentioned that the great unknown and the key to summer next season will be the removal of travel restrictions by the UK.

 

He also highlighted the fundamental role played by the melia.com direct sales channel (which currently generates 62% of sales) as a competitive advantage, an essential factor at a time when there is greater difficulty for companies with less digital market penetration.

 

This season, company hotels will be fully prepared to welcome back guests with a wide range of health and safety measures implemented through the Stay Safe With Meliá programme, certified by Bureau Veritas and designed to guarantee the highest standards of health and safety. More than 21,000 company employees have been trained in the programme, which last year achieved an average satisfaction rating of 83.3% among customers.

 

 

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