The Spanish hotel management company Sol Meliá has recently signed a 10 year management contract to take over its first hotel in Argentina: the Meliá Confort Buenos Aires which is to be built at a cost of US$12 million to be wholly financed by Grupo 5, the hotel owner.

This new 4-star city hotel is another firm step towards achieving Sol Meliá‘s expansion objectives in Latin America and is scheduled to open during the autumn of this year. With 125 rooms, including 16 suites, the hotel will target male and female business travellers both from Argentina and from all over the world.

The rooms measure an extremely comfortable 38 m2 and are fitted with all of the facilities required by the modern business traveller including fax and modem connections.

The Meliá Confort Buenos Aires is located in the financial and commercial heart of the Argentinian capital and provides a modern Business Centre including six meeting rooms for up to 250 guests and a full Fitness Centre for guests to make the most of their leisure.

The Executive Vice-President of the Sol Meliá Americas Division, Rui Manuel Oliveira, has said that “the incorporation of this first hotel in Argentina will help to consolidate our expansion in Latin America, especially when we consider that this is one of the fastest growing country’s in the region and the enormous tourism development potential that exists”. In 1996, the Argentinian GNP grew by 4.4%.

Sol Meliá currently provides 245 hotels, 50 of them located in Latin America and the Caribbean; in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Of the 27 hotels taken over by the Company in 1997, 10 of them joined the Americas Division creating an increase in management fee revenues of 30%.

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