Meliá Hotels announces extending footprint to 14 new markets including Tanzania

Meliá Hotels International, the leading hotel company in Spain has announced the extending of its footprint in 14 new markets this year including Tanzania, Cape Verde, Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, Iran, Qatar and Saudi Arabia being part of the company’s strategic vision and growth prospects for 2023.

According to the company’s Vice Chairman and CEO, Gabriel Escarrer, the company will continue to prioritise its strengths in brand innovation and experiences, leadership in resort hotels, digitalisation, international expansion and sustainability, all key factors in the resilience shown by the company over the past year.

Despite geopolitical and economic circumstances, Escarrer indicated that the demand for travel which shot up after the pandemic travel restrictions were lifted, is also resisting the fear of recession, and thus accelerating the rate of recovery of the business.

With prudent optimism, he forecasted global growth in 2023, indicating that reservations for future stays are up 35% on melia.com compared to the previous year.

He also described a consistent recovery in city hotels and the MICE segment, the latter particularly driven by the revival of the US market.

A global portfolio of more than 100,000 rooms

In 2022 Meliá opened a total of 32 hotels with 7,500 rooms. Growth prioritised holiday destinations in Southeast Asia, the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, and was another of the milestones explained by Escarrer as he reflected on the addition in 2022 of more than 8,200 rooms.

The recent addition of the first Meliá hotel in the Seychelles and the agreement with Vinpearl in Vietnam were two of the year’s highlights, the latter allowing it to become the second largest hotel operator in Vietnam.

This growth allowed the company to take its total room count to over 100,000 in operating hotels and those in the process of opening.