Published on : Monday, July 16, 2018
Growth of global tourism would not have been possible, of course, without a well-structured tourist infrastructure, the most essential part of which is the hotels industry.
The Spanish-based Melia Hotels International is a case in point.
Melia’s history reflects the way the industry itself prospered. It opened its first hotel on the tourist island of Majorca in 1956, which was the perfect time to greet the influx of mass Mediterranean tourism. By the mid-1990s, it became the first European hotel group to be quoted on the stock exchange.
Today, Melia is one of the largest resort chains in the world. It is also Europe’s third-largest hotel group after the UK’s Intercontinental Hotels and the French group, Accor.
Currently, the group owns more than 380 hotels in 43 countries on four continents employing 44,000 people with multiple brands like Sol Melia, Innside and Tryp. It has a portfolio of 97,000 rooms, and it plans to add 16,000 new ones in the next two years and has a market value of €2.6bn.
Melia’s business model is interesting, which is an ‘asset-light’ strategy. It means that it doesn’t always own the hotels but instead manages or leases them. It is gradually focusing on the Asia/Pacific market.
The group is already a significant player in Latin America and Cuba but now it is emphasizing on the Asia/Pacific region where it currently has 40 hotels or resorts.
However, the group already has a presence in Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand and China.
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