TravelMole Interview: Jaime Puig, Sol Melia

Wednesday, 18 Sep, 2003 0

It made sense for hotel group Sol Melia to sell its stake in Lastminute Spain because its priorities lie elsewhere, the company’s managing director of investor relations Jaime Puig has told TravelMole.

He pointed out that the company is engaged in a number of new ventures – including the development of the Hard Rock Hotels concept, a new themed hotels collaboration with Warner Bros and the development of a timeshare proposal.

Mr Puig told TravelMole: “We are in the hotel business, not the internet business. They [Lastminute] have been great partners and we both agree that this should be the next step. It’s not a big issue for us that that they are the owner. We now have a channel of distribution where we are preferred suppliers.”

He pointed out that Sol Melia didn’t want “to spend any more money” on the venture and by selling its 70% share to Lastminute it could walk away with a profit of 4.5million euros.

Mr Puig said the new deal – which sees Sol Melia becoming the first hotel chain to add lastminute’s dynamic packaging tools to its website would benefit the hotel group. Users will be able to create packages using lastminute’s flights portfolio and Sol Melia hotels. Mr Puig said a second phase would allow car rental and entertainment to be added to the package through a dedicated Lastminute section on the Sol Melia site.

Mr Puig pointed out that the majority of sales – 70% – still come through intermediaries. However internet sales have been rising sharply. According to Mr Puig in 2002 the internet accounted for about 1.5% of total sales, but he said this had now increased to be in the region of 6-7%. While stressing that agents and operators were still important to Sol Melia, Mr Puig said that it would be foolish for the hotel group to ignore the internet which offered another valuable sales channel.

He likened concerns about the internet to concerns about the GDSs 10 years ago, saying: “When GDSs came out, everyone was very panicky and thought it would be the end of the travel agent. It’s not, it’s just an additional channel.”

See related stories:
18 Sept 2003Hard Rock Hotels will be classy not trashy, claims boss
17 Sept 2003Lastminute takes full control of Spanish business