Meliá to have more than 100,000 rooms by 2020

Meliá Hotels International expects to have more than 100,000 rooms in Asia, the Americas, Europe, Africa and the Middle East by 2020.

The bold statement was made by Gabriel Escarrer, the company’s executive vice president and CEO, during a presentation at FITUR, the international tourism expo held in Madrid earlier this month.

This year’s trade fair, which saw a record attendance of more than 140,000, included Meliá providing a revealing update on 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.

Escarrer, highlighted the major aspects of the Plan designed to achieve this objective – expansion, brand renovation and repositioning, digitalisation, corporate responsibility, and the modernisation of the company’s culture and values.

Gabriel Escarrer addresses FITUR delegates

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.

In terms of 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 more than 100,000.

Meliá will open more than 40 new hotels in 2018 and 2019, a record rate of growth for the company. According to Escarrer, it 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”.

Key upcoming openings include Meliá Serengeti Lodge in the heart of Serengeti National Park, which will also become the company’s first 100 per cent environmentally-friendly hotel; the ME Sitges Terramar in Spain, which Escarrer described as “the hotel that will put Sitges back at the cutting edge of the hotel industry”, and the ME Dubai, the last hotel designed inside and out by the late architect Zaha Hadid.

Escarrer also announced the signing of the company’s fifth hotel in the United Kingdom, the Innside Liverpool, in association with leading editorial group Trinity Mirror Plc.