Tomàs Codina, director of Expansion at MedPlaya, shares with the newspaper ‘Desarrollo’ the future prospects of the hotel chain, in an interview published on September 27, 2022. Below you can find all the details.

 

MedPlaya, focused on growing with an ‘asset light’ model, is seeking agreements with managers that are established in territories where they are not present and plans to return to the Balearic Islands, where the company had “some fantastic hotels in the 1990s,” it indicates in an interview with ‘Desarrollo’ Tomàs Codina, director of Expansion at MedPlaya.

 

What’s MedPlaya’s strategy to grow in Spain?

We want to grow in the management or leasing of mainly vacation hotels. For these purposes, we will continue to develop our activity as an institutional manager offering our services to institutional investors or independent owners. Likewise, we are exploring the possibility of seeking agreements with management companies that are established in territories in which we are not currently present.

 

What are your expansion plans for Spain in the next two years?

In the next two years we want to grow by a thousand rooms.

 

Do you contemplate disembarking in new countries?

Currently, outside of Spain, we are only present in Bulgaria with a owned hotel that we manage and in Belgium, where we provide services to a hotel establishment. With this experience, we do not rule out landing in other countries.

 

Which brands do you plan to position in the Spanish market?

From a brand point of view, our vacation hotel strategy is primarily to use the MedPlaya brand. In those hotels with special recognition, we use by MedPlaya. However, we do not mind using the brand that the owner asks us to use and, in fact, in some cases we are already doing it.

 

In which communities in Spain does MedPaya intend to position itself?

We would like to grow more on the Costa del Sol, on the Costa Daurada and on the Costa Brava and return to the Balearics, where we had some fantastic hotels in the nineties.

 

Do you contemplate launching new brands and/or new products?

We are exploring the development of a new product in which the varied restaurant offer is one of its attractions.

 

What type of investors and assets are you looking for?

We work very well with institutional investors. We perfectly understand their objectives and we are prepared to achieve the results they expect. And we think that if we are able to satisfy these investors, we will be able to do it with any other type of owner. Ideally, we look for hotels with more than 120 rooms located on the seafront.

 

Do you analyze investment fund proposals? If so, in what kind of projects and where in Spain?

Of course. We collaborate with several funds and we have a special relationship with Azora. We cannot comment on the projects we are studying for reasons of confidentiality.

 

How does the current climate of inflation and rising interest rates affect you?

We don’t like the inflationary climate. But as long as inflation doesn’t run amok, and we think it won’t because of central bank determination, we’re not worried. It is a matter of being able to adapt to the environment.

The rate hike will affect the value of assets in the sense that investors will expect a higher return, so if hotels cannot improve their results they will have to reduce their selling price.

 

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