Gabriel Escarrer At Fitur: "With solid and consistent growth, by 2020 we will have over 100,000 rooms in Asia, the Americas, Europe, Africa and the Middle East"
The Vice President and Chief Executive Officer of Meliá celebrates one year at the helm, highlighting the reliability and long-term stability of the company’s business model |
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Gabriel Escarrer At Fitur: "With solid and consistent growth, by 2020 we will have over 100,000 rooms in Asia, the Americas, Europe, Africa and the Middle East"
The Vice President and Chief Executive Officer of Meliá celebrates one year at the helm, highlighting the reliability and long-term stability of the company’s business model |
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For this new stage, Meliá has a new tagline which reflect its ambitions of leadership and excellence in city and resort hotels: "Leisure at heart, business in mind"International growth: "Our 2016-2018 Strategic Plan aims to make us stronger and retain our leadership in the leisure and bleisure segments".
Sustainable business model: "The growing percentage of EBITDA generated by hotels operated under management agreements makes us stronger and reduces our exposure to economic downturns"
Smooth generational transition: "The transfer of executive powers to me by the company founder in 2017 was impeccable and very well received by our stakeholders"
New brand vision: "We are anticipating the future by renewing our hotels and brand attributes thanks to our knowledge of our customers and monitoring of trends"
Digital revolution: "Our digital transformation prioritises the customer experience, with greater knowledge about our customer allowing us to provide more and better services. The new MeliaPro programme also strengthens our commitment to our B2B clients"
Corporate responsibility and reputation: "We strive to maximise our contribution to society through our corporate responsibility strategy and our involvement in causes and projects on a local and global level"
Corporate culture: "The values of personalized service, friendliness and hospitality that have always been core to the nature of Meliá, have been updated and become more important than ever in our new company culture"
Commitment to Spain: "Our Spanish essence and roots are one of our greatest strengths, and we remain committed to Spain, as can be seen in the new hotels we are adding and our continued investments"
Palma Convention Centre: "We are proud of our first year of operations at the Convention Centre, exceeding all expectations and opening up new horizons for tourism in the Balearic Islands"
Today at FITUR, Meliá Hotels International presented its progress in each of the five key objectives in its Strategic Plan to 2018, governed by the idea of becoming stronger, and not merely larger.
The Executive Vice President and CEO of Meliá, Gabriel Escarrer, highlighted the major aspects of the Plan designed to achieve this objective: expansion, brand renovation and repositioning, digitalization, corporate responsibility, and the modernization of the company's culture and values. The company looks towards the remainder of the 21st century with a new brand tagline: "leisure at heart, business in mind", expressing its aim to maintain its international leadership in leisure hotels while also retaining its commitment to growing its presence and leadership in city or business hotels.
Regarding company expansion, Escarrer described important growth which has seen the addition of 30 hotels, most of which will open over the next two years, and which will take the number of hotel rooms either open or pending opening to over 100,000.
With regard to hotel openings, the company continues to optimise its processes, and 2018 and 2019 will see more than 40 new hotels open, a record rate of growth never before achieved by the company. According to Escarrer, the company “is making a titanic effort in recruitment, team building and the pre-opening process to ensure it is able to respond to this rapid growth.” Among the next most important openings, Escarrer highlighted the magnificent Meliá Serengeti Lodge in the heart of Serengeti National Park, which will also become the company’s first 100% environmentally-friendly hotel, the ME Sitges Terramar, which he describes as "the hotel that will put Sitges back at the cutting edge of the hotel industry", and the spectacular ME Dubai, the last hotel designed inside and out by the excellent but prematurely deceased architect Zaha Hadid.
Escarrer also announced the signature of the company’s fifth hotel in the United Kingdom, the Innside Liverpool, in association with the UK’s leading editorial group, Trinity Mirror Plc.
With regard to Spain, Escarrer mentioned that the Gran Meliá Palacio de los Duques is now one of the top 3 luxury hotels in Madrid only one year after opening, and that in 2017 the company opened the Meliá Palma Bay Hotel alongside the Palma de Mallorca Convention Centre, the Sol Beach House Fuerteventura, the Innside Palma Bosque, and the Tryp Santa Ponsa (Mallorca). In 2018, it plans to open the ME Sitges Terramar and the Sol Atalaya Park in Estepona.
The Vice President and CEO of Meliá was especially proud of the management performance at the Palma Convention Centre, where the excellent market reaction has exceeded all expectations. The Convention Centre has hosted 173 events in only 9 months since its opening, and is forecasting extraordinary demand both domestically and internationally. For Escarrer, the Convention Centre is a magnificent example of how public-private partnerships in tourism can help transform a destination such as Palma, extending the arrival of visitors to months with traditionally low demand, and contributing to the generation of wealth in all areas of society.
As Escarrer recalled, Meliá's strong commitment to Spain is not limited to new openings, but is also reflected in the important investments the company has made in renovation, rebranding and repositioning, totalling over 500 million euros over the last 6 years.Digital and brand transformation, culture and valuesEscarrer emphasized that it is no longer enough to "work digital", but rather what is needed nowadays is to "be digital". That is why the company is strengthening its direct channels for consumers (melia.com) and B2B partners (MeliaPro), the latter a pioneering new programme that meets all the needs of travel professionals. It is also the reason why it is optimizing customer loyalty management by improving the MeliaRewards programme, and maximizing revenue management to ensure that each individual customer gets the best possible value proposition for their money. The company is also evolving its global sales model to better adapt to the complexities of the modern global market.
Escarrer also explained the important work done with hotel brands within the framework of the Strategic Plan to adapt to or anticipate major market trends such as “bleisure” travel combining both business and leisure, the growing demand for wellness services and life-enriching experiences, the growing concern for the environment and corporate responsibility, and the passion for gastronomy.
In this vein, he highlighted the new positioning of the company’s premium brands: Gran Meliá, always at the forefront of luxury, bringing Spanish passion and flair to a luxury hotel market dominated by Anglo-Saxon chains; ME by Meliá, providing hotels that are trendy social and fashion epicentres with a growing focus on culture; and Paradisus by Meliá, which offers luxurious all-inclusive resorts in dream destinations and now an even more environmentally-friendly and socially responsible positioning.
As the CEO of Meliá also explained, the constantly changing global and digital environment has made it more urgent than ever to strengthen and enhance Meliá’s corporate values and culture. The result is the modernization of its values related to personalized service, friendliness and hospitality, values which have always been core to the nature of Meliá, acknowledging that they will continue to play a key role in this new stage. At the same time the company has also changed its tagline to "Leisure at heart, business in mind", reflecting its intentions to strengthen its leadership in both leisure and “bleisure” hotels.
According to Escarrer, these solid service values contributed to the fact that the company’s hotels registered a Net Promoter Score close to 50% in satisfaction surveys in 2017, a level considered "excellent" and way above the average for the industry.
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