Q & A with Asuncion LisonMarketing Director of Five-Star Hotels for Hesperia Hotels.

Q- Asuncion, I want you to talk to me not only about hotels in Spain, but also about your expansion plans towards Latin America and the Caribbean. I mean to ask you, how is Hesperia Hotels doing right now?

A- For the time being, Europe is going to be our first expansion goal with grand openings in some of the top European cities. As we speak, we have 39 hotels in Spain, one in Andorra, two in Venezuela and another one in Brussels.

Q- What new lodgings are you going to open soon in Spain?

A- We´re going to open a couple of hotels in Barcelona next year. One of them, the Grand Hesperia Hotel, is an ambitious project. I´m talking about a five-star giant featuring an awesome 105-meter-high tower designed by well-known architect Richard Rogers. Later this year, we´ll open a boutique hotel in Madrid´s Salamanca neighborhood. That´s going to be a beauty because it´s an old-timed mansion. We´ve got plans in the offing to inaugurate another hotel in Bilbao, maybe later this year or in early 2005. Indeed, the chain has been growing rapidly in recent years.

Q- Will you continue running hotels or building new properties?

A- We´re doing both. Some of these facilities are under construction right now. In some other cases -as it did happen over the past month, two months ago exactly- we reached an agreement with Pastor Bank to run La Toja and the Finisterre hotels in Galicia for the next fifteen years.

Q- Hesperia Hotels´ marketing policy is now more aggressive than what other companies do. Are these hotels, especially the boutique hotel and other top-notch resorts, actually helping you get a tighter grip of the competition?

A- Hesperia is a dual hotel chain. We´ve got urban hotels and beachfront hotels of different categories. Our goal is to be the very best in each and every sector, in every category, and what we´re doing is contained in that slogan of ours that reads "We Are Hoteliers." That explains why we´re always looking for the best professionals in the industry for each and every hotel. That´s our philosophy.

Q- Cuisine is a major piece in all hotels. What are you doing right now as far as gourmet excellence is concerned?

A- We´re well aware of the importance of having the best cuisine money can buy in our hotels. We put that area in the hands of great professionals that we choose thoroughly among the finest chefs and cooks there are. In the case of the Madrid Hesperia Hotel, this establishment opened a restaurant some three years ago -the Santceloni- run by Santi Santamaria, one of the best chefs in the country. We also have other projects in the short run for Santi Santamaria in Barcelona. Our top priority is to open a good Spanish food restaurant in all of our hotels, as well as similar outlets serving local food and the finest international cuisine.

Q- To the best of my understanding, you´ve divided the marketing field in different sectors. Tell me a little bit about that division.

A- On the one hand, we´ve got the urban hotels, and the four- and five-star lodgings within that same category. On the other hand, we have a team specialized in congress, incentives and conventions, and another group dealing with large accounts.

Q- Asuncion, you told me you´re going to open a new hotel in Andorra in July. Will you have spas there? Are you going to boost up relaxation areas in your hotels?

A- We do have hotels with spas and beachfront resorts. But we´ll be focusing on those hotels in which we have good infrastructure, like the Guitiriz Hotel and the Grand Toja Hotel, both with great tradition in spa and thermal water services. In the hotels that are already built and aren´t outfitted with that kind of service, we simply hook them up to some nearby fitness center or spa resort. A case in point is the Metropolitan, that solved that problem by relying on one of the enterprises run by the group itself.