Sellout of Sol Meliá’s hotels

The predicaments souring the tourist sector all around the globe have forced some European companies to sell out part of their assets the chains themselves have labeled as “non strategic.” NH Hotels sold four establishments earlier this year in order to earmark 30 million euros for a recently opened four-star resort in Stuttgart, Germany.

Club Med has shut down lodging facilities in Spain and the U.S., while Sol Meliá has also done his own: the sellout of poorly profitable hotels in some major European cities.

The Spain-based chain is selling five hotels in such Spanish locations as Mallorca, Ciudad Real, Granada and Cadiz, thus moving those assets to other places in the Old World, like Paris and London, rendered as more interesting by the company.

In its effort to put up with the current crisis, Sol Meliá has taken on a de-investment policy, sources close to the sector told 5días publication. The Spanish chain explains “this operation is nothing but a mere asset recovery that includes moving out of low-profiting areas to more strategic ones.”

It’s not hard to realize that the worldwide crisis the tourist sector is going through has snared this company in a financially uncomfortable moment. The shrinkage of the leisure industry came to pass on the heels of a major move made by Sol Meliá to buy out Tryp Hotels.

This de-investment process currently underway in three-star and four-star hotels is nothing new for Sol Meliá. In recent years, the chain has put other five resorts on the block, including the Bavaro Meliá, the Dominican Republic’s standard-bearer facility. In the year 2000, the company explained it was “only a recovery strategy to funnel funds into Europe.”