The CEO of HIP, the Blackstone fund that owns most of the hotel supply in the south of Gran Canaria, Alejandro Hernández-Puértolas, speaks little and, when he does, he speaks truths like fists. This Tuesday, at the XII Exceltur Forum in Madrid, which is held in the heat of Fitur 2024, he urged the authorities to take care of the destination from an environmental point of view and, for promotional purposes, to do logical things. That is to say: doing good tourist communication is not organizing a party at fairs.
The south of Gran Canaria is a hot destination for hotel investment and that is largely because the masters of the destination are North Americans who have professionalized management and left behind the primitive forms of promotion that had barely evolved since the 1970s in Playa del English and Maspalomas. Blackstone is the largest hotelier in the south of Gran Canaria with chains such as the former IFA Hotels, Dunas, Margarita de Playa del Inglés. There are other funds but with a lower investment burden, such as Bankinter's Atom Socimi in the old Tamarindos hotel.
Hernández-Puértolas did not mention the south of Gran Canaria but the mayor of San Bartolomé de Tirajana, Marco Aurelio Pérez, who leads the institutional presence in the south of the island, was present at that forum. The largest hotelier in Gran Canaria said that "a destination must manage its image" and that "you have to take care of the environment and know how to communicate, because bad press can sink it. It is necessary to attract brands, because that ends up attracting investment." In recent years, chains like Sheraton have left the south of Gran Canaria.
For his part, the owner of the Tamarindos hotel, which now has a different name and is managed by Meliá, Víctor Martí, CEO of the Bankinter Socimi de Atom Hoteles, highlighted that "misinformation is generating uncertainty and volatility that is transferred to the markets." and that "the main problem is going to be access to debt, in addition to the slowness of regulation and human capital."
In 2023, the largest operation of the year in the south of Gran Canaria was precisely the acquisition of 35% of the portfolio of Hotel Investment Partners (HIP), owned by Blackstone, by the Singapore sovereign fund (GIC). In addition, the hotel sector has established itself as the first focus of investment, exceeding 4.000 million euros transacted throughout the year, accumulating more than 35% of the total, and being the only one that grows compared to 2022, increasing by 30%.
