Meliá Hotels International, S.A. (formerly Sol Meliá) is a Spanish

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 hotel chain which was founded by Gabriel Escarrer Juliá in 1956 in Palma de Mallorca. The company is the world's largest operator of holiday resort

Resort

A resort is a place used for relaxation or recreation, attracting visitors for holidays or vacations. Resorts are places, towns or sometimes commercial establishment operated by a single company....

s and the 13th biggest hotel chain worldwide. Domestically the company is the market leader

Market share

Market share is the percentage of a market accounted for by a specific entity. In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 67 percent responded that they found the "dollar market share" metric very useful, while 61% found "unit market share" very useful.Marketers need to be able to...

 in both resort and urban

Urban area

An urban area is characterized by higher population density and vast human features in comparison to areas surrounding it. Urban areas may be cities, towns or conurbations, but the term is not commonly extended to rural settlements such as villages and hamlets.Urban areas are created and further...

 hotels. Currently Sol Meliá operates around 300 hotels in 27 countries worldwide, employing almost 17,000 people.

History

The origins of the company reach back to 1956, when the then-21-year-old Gabriel Escarrer Juliá leased the Altair Hotel in Palma, Majorca. Over the subsequent years Escarrer took advantage of the island's increasing popularity as a tourist destination

Tourist destination

A tourist destination is a city, town, or other area that is dependent to a significant extent on the revenues accruing from tourism. It may contain one or more tourist attractions and possibly some "tourist traps."...

 for package holidaymakers

Package holiday

A package holiday or package tour consists of transport and accommodation advertised and sold together by a vendor known as a tour operator. Other services may be provided like a rental car, activities or outings during the holiday. Transport can be via charter airline to a foreign country...

, adding further properties to the portfolio

Portfolio (finance)

Portfolio is a financial term denoting a collection of investments held by an investment company, hedge fund, financial institution or individual.-Definition:The term portfolio refers to any collection of financial assets such as stocks, bonds and cash...

 of his company, Hoteles Mallorquines. The company expanded geographically in the 1960s and 70s, acquiring hotels in the Canaries

Canary Islands

The Canary Islands , also known as the Canaries , is a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km west of the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara. The Canaries are a Spanish autonomous community and an outermost region of the European Union...

 as well as the other Balearic Islands

Balearic Islands

The Balearic Islands are an archipelago of Spain in the western Mediterranean Sea, near the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula.The four largest islands are: Majorca, Minorca, Ibiza and Formentera. The archipelago forms an autonomous community and a province of Spain with Palma as the capital...

. After the decline of General Franco

Francisco Franco

Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...

's dictatorship, tourism in Spain

Tourism in Spain

Tourism in Spain was developed during the last years of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, when the country became a popular place for summer holidays, especially for tourists from the British Isles, France, Central Europe and Scandinavia. In 2007, Spain became the second most visited country of the...

 developed more rapidly and Hoteles Mallorquines aggressively moved onto the Spanish mainland, establishing a presence in much of the country by the early 1980s.

In 1984 the company renamed itself Hoteles Sol (Sun Hotels), before establishing itself as the largest hotel chain in the country with the acquisition of the 32 location-strong Hotasa group. Another merger

Mergers and acquisitions

Mergers and acquisitions refers to the aspect of corporate strategy, corporate finance and management dealing with the buying, selling, dividing and combining of different companies and similar entities that can help an enterprise grow rapidly in its sector or location of origin, or a new field or...

 followed three years later as the company combined with the upmarket Meliá chain to form Sol Meliá. The deal increased the geographical scope of the company into the Caribbean

Caribbean

The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

, Americas

Americas

The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...

 and other parts of Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

.

A 1996 split of the company into two separate businesses, one for hotel ownership (Inmotel) and another for management (Sol Meliá, which listed on the Bolsa de Madrid

Bolsa de Madrid

Bolsa de Madrid is the largest and most international of Spain's four regional stock exchanges that trade shares and convertible bonds and fixed income securities, and both government and private-sector debt...

), was reversed three years later amid major consolidation

Consolidation (business)

Consolidation or amalgamation is the act of merging many things into one. In business, it often refers to the mergers and acquisitions of many smaller companies into much larger ones. In the context of financial accounting, consolidation refers to the aggregation of financial statements of a group...

 in the industry. Gabriel Escarrer Sr. subsequently stepped down from the chief executive

Chief executive officer

A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...

 role, replaced by his sons Gabriel Jr. and Sebastian, who became deputy CEO. The following year brief takeover talks were held with Hilton International

Hilton Hotels Corporation

Hilton Worldwide is a global hospitality company. It is owned by the Blackstone Group, a private equity firm. As of July 2011 Hilton brands encompass 3,750 hotels with over 600,000 rooms in 84 countries...

, but Sol Meliá instead chose to make an acquisition of its own, paying €360 million for smaller peer Tryp Hotels. Tryp had come close to being purchased by rival chain NH Hoteles

NH Hoteles

NH Hotels is a Spanish-based hotel chain headquartered in Madrid. NH offers moderately priced and modernly-furnished hotel rooms and lobbies, located primarily in Europe, Latin America, and Africa. NH Hoteles ranks third in the European ranking for business hotels. The group has 347 hotels with...

 a year earlier. Tryp continued to exist as a separate brand within the Sol Meliá group. Rights to the Tryp brand were sold to Wyndham Worldwide

Wyndham Worldwide

Wyndham Worldwide is the holding company for Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Group RCI and other lodging brands. It was spun off from Cendant Corporation in July 2006....

 in 2010, but Sol Meliá continues to own and operate the hotels under a licensing agreement

License

The verb license or grant licence means to give permission. The noun license or licence refers to that permission as well as to the document recording that permission.A license may be granted by a party to another party as an element of an agreement...

.

On 3 June 2011 the company changed its name to Meliá Hotels International.

The company has recently sought to forge partnerships with other companies in the leisure industry, opening hotels based on the Hard Rock Cafe

Hard Rock Cafe

Hard Rock Cafe is a chain of theme restaurants founded in 1971 by Americans Peter Morton & Isaac Tigrett. In 1979, the cafe began covering its walls with rock and roll memorabilia, a tradition which expanded to others in the chain. In 2006, Hard Rock was sold to the Seminole Tribe of Florida, and...

 concept in conjunction with then-parent The Rank Group

The Rank Group

The Rank Group plc is a European gaming and leisure business. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.-History:...

, and Flintstones

The Flintstones

The Flintstones is an animated, prime-time American television sitcom that screened from September 30, 1960 to April 1, 1966, on ABC. Produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, The Flintstones was about a working class Stone Age man's life with his family and his next-door neighbor and best friend. It...

-themed hotels with Warner Bros.

Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...

Although publicly traded

Public company

This is not the same as a Government-owned corporation.A public company or publicly traded company is a limited liability company that offers its securities for sale to the general public, typically through a stock exchange, or through market makers operating in over the counter markets...

 since 1996, the Escarrer family continues to control Meliá Hotels, holding a combined stake of over 63% at the end of 2010.

Operations

The company employs various commercial brands to offer their product, including Gran Meliá, Meliá Hotels & Resorts, ME by Meliá, Innside, Tryp Hotels, Sol Hotels, Paradisus Resorts and Sol Meliá Vacation Club.

The firm operates almost 300 hotels as of May 2011, of which over 150 are in Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

. Of the other 26 countries in which Meliá Hotels operates, the largest numbers of hotels are located in Cuba

Cuba

The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, Croatia

Croatia

Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...

, Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

 and Portugal

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

.