Mexican hotel chain branches out across Latin America

The Posadas Group, a Mexican hotel chain, has started out an ambitious two-year expansion plan across Latin America that entertains the possibility of opening a number of resorts in Brazil, Chile and Argentina with a $400 million budget.

The building impulse derived from this project will add some 20,000 rooms to the group’s stock of accommodations, announced Pablo Azcarraga, deputy vice president of hotel operations for Posadas.

The company foresees the opening of at least one hotel every month with Posadas chipping in just 7 percent of the money. The Mexican company’s partners –interested in highlighting the trademark elsewhere- will pick up the rest of the tab.

The plan also includes the inauguration of 25 new lodging establishments in Mexico under the Fiesta Inn, Caesar Business, Caesar Park and Fiesta Americana brands.

The Posadas Group –founded in 1967- homes in on the opening of hotels in those places where it can amass an exclusive business class clientele, a segment of the market that accounts for nearly 70 percent of its total revenues.

“Perhaps this is not the best of times for the hotel industry, but we’re not in the worst of times,” Mr. Azcarraga averred.

The company’s expansion plans comes on the heels of the decision made by Alfredo Harp –a cousin of Carlos Slim’s, for many the wealthiest man in Latin America- to buy roughly 15 percent of the Posadas Group and take in a good deal of stocks from other three local enterprises.

In 2001, Mr. Harp sold Banamex-Accival, Mexico’s major financial company, to U.S. megabuck banking company Citibank for $12 billion.