Q & A with Javier Coll, vice president of Apple Leisure Group
Javier Coll is the vice president of ALG Apple Leisure Group, a leading company in the travel industry with over 40 years of experience, and he is at WTM London 2015 shedding light on the results of the company’s work. Caribbean News Digital talked to Javier Coll, Vice president of ALG, about his participation and objectives.
How’s the British market faring for Apple Leisure Group? Is it growing?
The British market is growing, just like the rest of the markets, especially because we’re offering more products with destination-brands and we’re working with destinations where the British market is stronger. For instance, we’re taking our products to such destinations as La Romana, Dominican Republic, where the British market has a significant presence, as well as the English-speaking Caribbean. So, I’m also talking about the North American and Canadian markets.
The media has published that one out of ten US tourists is a customer of Apple Leisure Group…
Two out of ten, it’s a great number: out of 10 customers traveling to the Caribbean, 2 are ours. 25 - 30 million US tourists travel overseas, anywhere, and half of them or so go to the Caribbean. We work with 20 percent of that half.
Your growth this year has been amazing. How many hotels have you opened?
In terms of openings, we have actually had 6 or 7 contracts. Whether they open now or later, it’s been 17 hotels with over 14 thousand rooms. It’s a 50 percent growth, so we’ve gone around 21 thousand rooms up, and we’ll keep on growing.
Do you have openings in new destinations?
We’re starting in Aruba, which is a new destination for us, as well as in Panama and Puerto Plata. Moreover, we’re assessing more projects in the English-speaking Caribbean, including Santa Lucia and Barbados.
Is Cuba one of the destinations you have in mind?
Of course, Cuba will be a great destination in terms of the size. I’ve always said that there are three big destinations in the Caribbean: Cuba, Dominican Republic and Cancun. We’re still limited by legal matters related to the United States, but we try to do everything we can in order to be well positioned when the time comes those markets. I think that we’ll succeed because we have a growing hotel company with distribution for such a country as Cuba, which will try to attract the US market. Our position is going to be very good.
You just opened Akumal in Quintana Roo. Could the fact of having many hotels owned by the same group, in the same area, Quintana Roo for example, be negative?
I think that, if we count the number of rooms in the area there are nearly 80 thousand, and we don’t even have 5 percent of it. There is nothing to be worried about. I believe that it’s more about exposure and making noise, and we’re good at that: explaining what we do, how and where we grow. It’s an opportunity to keep on growing without any problem. We have the same passenger percentage we had last year: 20 percent. We’ve gone up in the number of hotels and we still have 20 percent. 80 percent of our distribution goes to our strategic partners, such as RIU, Iberostar, Meliá… etc. It hasn’t changed for them or us. Our growth is related to the customers of many hotels that weren’t strategic, didn’t have much value in terms of hotel chain, as they were independent hotels or the quality was not that high. We’ve grown with those customers. But we’re not saturated at all or running out of customers.
You have joined the list of Hotels magazine and you’re ranked 80th, since the Caribbean was only managed by Spanish hoteliers not long ago. Is that an incentive for you to keep on opening, managing and modifying the tourism system in the Caribbean?
Just imagine that we have to go from the 80th position to the first one.
At this rate you won’t have much left.
I think that the merit refers to have done this in 13 years, in such a short period, with a good product. We don’t take just any hotel, we’re demanding in terms of the quality and kind of hotel. That’s the worth, not the 80th or 70th position, but having done it in such a consistent way.
Quality is the secret…
The secret is also our target niche: the American market. That takes a series of sacrifices, such as what you have to pay per person, because when you have customers that pay more, they demand more. We don’t want to be everything for everybody, we don’t need to adapt our product to other destinations or visitors from other destinations, but we can focus on what the American market wants. Those standards attract most of markets, but that’s something other chains can’t do because they have other commitments.
How much are you going to grow through the end of the year?
No, we’ll wait until next year. I don’t think that we’re going to make any further announcement. We just announced the opening of a hotel in Puerto Plata, perhaps we speak of another two, but we’re waiting for a couple of things.
As for the European market, what’s promotion intention? What would be the target markets?
In the European market we’ll obviously aim at both German and British markets. The Spanish market is very important to us. We haven’t done a high-level advertising work in the Spanish market and we have to do it. This market sometimes thinks that our products are too Americanized, but we have a significant niche at the highest level of the Spanish market with our high-end products.
Are you planning to move away from the Caribbean and Latin America, and opening in other markets?
Someday, but we’re presently focused on the Caribbean, where we have nearly two million passengers. There is a lot to do there. There are places where our distribution is high and we don’t have hotels managed by AM Resorts. The same models we’ve followed in Cancun, Dominican Republic or Mexico will be applied on other islands. We’d have a significant growth in Cuba if it’s finally opened.
Where would you base your hotel in Cuba? On a key?
We believe that entering in Havana is a must, despite of us not being an urban chain. Cuba is big and that’s why it’s important to have hotels in Havana, Varadero and obviously the keys, but we want to develop product Cuba from a distribution approach, it’s not only about managing hotels. The American market will be specifically interested in Havana.
Is that a short or long-term move?
Who knows, we’d like to see it in the short term, but I think that there is a lot of politics around this matter, the USA will hold presidential elections and I don’t think that the solution will come up before the elections. It’s a sensitive matter and I assume that they have some plans.
The answer to your question would be yes, we’ll go to Asia. We admire RIU because of its forward-looking approach and growth, and I know that many Spanish chains follow RIU’s steps. We do something similar: you need flights to enter a destination and having RIU in a destination is very helpful. If we set a flight, RIU is going to be there. Opening destinations is very simple when one of these chains comes in. We’ll go to outlander destinations in the short term.
