Sol Meliá Reports Profits of €36.7 Million

The hotel chain Sol Meliá announced financial results for the first half of the year which show a net profit of 36.7 million euros and revenues of 618.5 million euros.

The positive performance of the business was adversely affected by several external factors including the current economic slowdown, the negative influence of the dollar exchange rate and, to a lesser degree, the British pound, in addition to the absence of capital gains from asset rotation activities over the first six months of the year compared to the 17.4 million euros achieved over the same period in 2007.

If the absence of capital gains and exchange rate fluctuations were ignored, revenues would have increased by 4.1 percent between January and June compared to the previous year, while EBITDA and net profit would have decrease by only 3.5 percent and 1.6 percent respectively. Instead of having decreased by 1.5 percent, revenues per available room (RevPAR) would have increased by 1.6 percent were it not for the weakness of the dollar.

The exchange rate fluctuations have also had an important effect on the results of the Sol Meliá Vacation Club (SMVC). Although the figures show a revenue decrease of 6.7 percent, this would have been an increase of 8.1 percent after eliminating exchange rate variations.