The explosive growth of tourism has returned profitability to a large part of the companies in the industry, which have dusted off investments and expansion plans paralyzed by the pandemic crisis. Now that travel demand does not seem to peak, it is time to grow again, the large hotel chains agree. And, above all, reposition its offer, with special emphasis on the premium and luxury segment, unrelated to crises and with greater added value for destinations.
The main companies have advanced these expansion forecasts at Fitur, the tourism fair held this week in Madrid and inaugurated today by the Kings, both internationally and in the Spanish market. Meliá, the country's leading hotel company, will increase its luxury offering from 66% to 84% in three years. This year he hopes to open more than twenty hotels and continue signing as many more. Among the most important projects of 2024, the Torre Melina hotel (former Juan Carlos) stands out, a Gran Meliá, its most exclusive brand, which reopened its doors in Barcelona this Wednesday. Especially significant will also be the growth of the luxury brand ME by Meliá, which this year will take it to destinations such as Lisbon, Malta, Málaga, Sayulita and Guadalajara (the latter two in Mexico). As for the Zel brand, the result of the collaboration with the tennis player Rafa Nadal and which debuted last year in Mallorca, it will open a new hotel in Tossa de Mar (Girona), and already has other projects in Sayulita (Mexico), Madrid and Punta Cana (Dominican Republic). “The future of our company is to be bigger and better managers, which means incorporating a minimum of one hotel every two weeks; a growth that will be very qualitative, focused especially on the luxury and premium segments,” highlighted its president, Gabriel Escarrer, from Fitur. The hotel company earned 1,478.3 million euros in the first nine months of its last fiscal year and earned 95.9 million. At the end of the year, it had 350 operational hotels and 92,057 rooms, plus another 64 projects in the process of opening.
The Hotusa hotel group, chaired by Amancio López Seijas (1.5 billion in turnover in 2023), also redoubles its commitment to the premium sector, a path that already began last year with the incorporation of Eurostars Sitges or Eurostars Royal Tanau, its second establishment. luxury in Baqueira Beret. The company plans to launch a new high-end brand to further boost this segment, the hotel company confirms.
For his part, the CEO of NH (Minor), Ramón Aragonés, highlighted that the company wants to strengthen its positioning in the luxury and resort segments and, in the latter, with “special focus” on southern Europe. Minor's income in the first nine months reached 1,612 million euros, which represents an increase of 355 million compared to the same period in 2019.
Hesperia has also opted for luxury with the comprehensive renovation of the La Manga Club hotel, which has operated under the Grand Hyatt brand since the middle of last year and which it hopes to consolidate in 2024. Apart from the premium, the hotel company has launched a plan for this year repositioning of its own brand hotels, with an investment of 20 million to renew them completely or partially, explained Gonzalo Alcaraz, general business director. These establishments will not go up in category but they will improve and adapt to the firm's new standards with the aim of also promoting its management model. In a first phase, the hotels in Seville, Sant Just, the Hesperia Presidente in Barcelona and the Hesperia Barri Gòtic will be readapted, in addition to the establishments in Córdoba and Bilbao. The company, with 23 hotels in its portfolio, closed 2023 with revenues of 160 million (20% more) and estimates to reach a turnover of 178 million this year.
Growth and repositioning plans add up and go on. The sector is going through a strong expansion phase that in Spain has led to citizen rejection in the most crowded destinations. While the sector celebrates the new visitor record for 2023 (84.5 million foreign tourists) and anticipates another historic figure for this year, it is also debating how to digest all this influx without choking. A better distribution of travelers throughout the year, an end to illegal tourist apartments and a shift towards the high-end are seen as solutions.
