Mr Pablo Mateos. General Manager of the Meliá Havana Hotel

Q: What are Meliá Havana’s main features and top services?

The Meliá Havana is hubbed in the heart of Miramar, right in the city’s brand-new business center, accompanied by the Miramar Trade Center that will have as many as 180 offices beginning this spring.

The hotel was opened on October 1998 and perhaps it stands for the best choice in Havana today. It’s got what it takes to meet the needs of leisure tourists and businesspeople coming to town to hold events. I’d say this is city’s standard-bearing lodging facility now, and just as our slogan reads, The Meliá Havana Hotel Is The Best Choice You’ve Got.

The hotel has 397 rooms, including 4 master suites,12 senior suites and 67 royal-service rooms. I can say we’ve got a steady clientele for this kind of service that accounts for a repeating factor of around 65 percent. As we speak and as far as business is concerned, the hotel is being highly requested. We serve a great variety of food and drinks, plus an entire array of customized services. We have the Bosque de la Habana cafeteria with round-the-clock service, Las Terrazas Grill & Bar serving the best broiled meat you’ve ever tasted, an Italian restaurant and a Cuban food eatery, plus our poolside area that ranks as one of the finest in the whole country.

Here, guests can find the best leisure and business opportunities. There’re eleven meeting halls, each one seating from 50 to 500 people, offering services for any kind of meeting. Coupled with our fine cuisine, the whole combination makes any event in this hotel a genuine success.

Q: Can you refer to those good numbers posted by the hotel in recent times despite the tough hardships the world is going through right now?

Regardless of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Meliá Havana Hotel kept occupancy rates around 67 percent all through 2002. That makes us jump to the conclusion that we’ve been wise enough to get a good grip of the market, put up with the crisis and make the hotel resilient to the economic situation worldwide. We’re quite a good example for many other institutions in the country because our guests never realize we’re tightening our belt in the services we provide them with.

Since last November, occupancy rates have remained above 70 percent. We’re closing this month with 84 percent and the prospects for April border on 70 percent. We hope the repercussions of the U.S.-Iraqi conflict won’t affect us. This is the best destination in the whole world, the safest of all. Fear to travel is the only potential hurdle for Cuba’s tourism. If the conflict comes to an end soon, you bet 2003 is going to be a takeoff year for Cuba. The island nation is certainly labeled as a very safe destination.

Q: Can you talk about the Blue Nights, that emblematic activity at the Meliá Havana Hotel?

One of the main attractions for a tourist visiting a country like Cuba is its culture. Inside our own hotel –and since its grand opening- we’ve paid close attention to culture. Not with the traditional kind of show you find elsewhere, but through performances in which the cream of the Cuban cultural crop is the name of the game. We’re talking about top-quality and varied shows we stage here. Guests can enjoy a large-scale show absolutely free at the hotel lobby. Cuban diva Rosita Fornes is the star of our show and she teams up with other major personalities of Cuba’s culture under the leadership of Jimmy Sanchez. We’re very excited about the possibility of giving guests a true image of what Cuban culture is really all about.

Q: New projects in the offing for Meliá Havana?

To build an all-purpose hall for 1,000 people since the congress and incentive segment is definitely on the rise in the country and especially in Sol Meliá. I mean, the chain’s urban hotels have all necessary conditions for any congress or event to really get there. To top it all off, we’ve also seen an increase in the number of transportation means, the existence of a conference center and other factors that help the coming of major events to town. A case in point is the amount of important events held on the island nation in recent years that have shown the world that the city of Havana is perfectly outfitted for any kind of event. Sol Meliá has made a 200 percent jump in that particular segment and we have to keep up the good work.

Another very important project is the one dealing with the increasingly larger U.S. market in Cuba, and chiefly at the Meliá Havana. These are very important perspectives and we’re putting together some new offers.

P: Is there anything you’d like to highlight about the Meliá Havana Hotel?

I’d like to mention the staff. Sol Meliá is celebrating 13 years since it landed its very first major project in Cuba. We are determined to strengthen a feeling of belonging among our employees. We’ve got a bunch of well-trained youngsters in our hotels working amid the challenge that the number of professionals in this sector is on the rise because we are to give better quality services all the time. Guests coming to Cuba have to see as country with a well-developed tourist industry. They are to get the best services money can buy from the moment they get off the plane or vessel.