Melia On A Roll

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Melia Hotels International is on a development roll, with a company that now has more than 350 hotels worldwide preparing to open additional properties on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Melia will open a Jamaica resort in December, with the one-time SuperClubs property found in the Montego Bay area.

Among Melia brands is Innside, now found in Germany and Madrid, and which will appear in New York City in 2016.

A ME hotel – another of Melia’s brands – is slated to open in Miami next year.

ME properties are billed as contemporary lifestyle resorts.

“Sometimes people think Melia is just in Mexico and the Caribbean,” Rodolfo Cresta, Melia’s director of leisure sales for North America, told a Toronto gathering Tuesday.

In fact, Melia is the third largest lodging company in Europe and has 13 hotels in Asia, along with properties in the Middle East. In all, Melia now has a presence in some 40 countries.

“We are a worldwide company,” Cresta declared.

The ME property in Cancun is unusual in that it is the only all-inclusive ME, Cresta reported.

The Paradisus brand offers the likes of Royal Service, which features such touches as a butler. Paradisus Reserves amount to what Cresta called a “small boutique hotel within a hotel.”
Cresta praised the Paradisus Cancun, saying it’s on a “Caribbean beach with turquoise water.”

Meanwhile, Cresta labelled the Melia resort in Puerto Vallarta as a “good family hotel,” thanks in part to bed arrangements that mean up to five people can be hosted in one room.

The resort has a “huge program for kids” and those staying there will find that Puerto Vallarta is a “really typical Mexican town,” he said.

Pictured at the event are (l-r) Belen Sanmartin of the Paradisus Palma Real Resort in Punta Cana; Cresta; Daniel Ceballos of Paradisus Cancun; Patricia Alvarez-Lebron of the Melia Caribe Tropical in Punta Cana; Natalie Carpentier of Melia’s Montreal office; Sandra Salazar of Paradisus Playa del Carmen; and Ernesto Luna of ME Cancun.