Q & A with Lorenzo ArranzGeneral Manager of the Sun Village Resort & Spa Group
by Jose Carlos de Santiago
The Sun Village Resort & Spa Group has decided to put its smart money on the future of the Dominican Republic´s travel industry, a country where the chain plans to open an establishment a year from now.
“And we will continue working with Americans and Canadians as key elements,” says Mr. Arranz, the company´s general manager, in this exclusive interview with Caribbean News Digital.
Q.- This brand you represent, what group does it belong to and where it is in the first place?
A.- The company belongs to the Elliot International Group with Canadian capital. Indeed, this is a family business run and presided over by Derek Elliot. His father, Fred Elliot, was the founder of the company and has specific business operations in real estate, hotels and even the filmmaking industry.
Q.- As far as your career is concerned, where do you come from? What groups have you been to?
A.- Well, I must say everything began in 1992, the year I came to the Dominican Republic. Before I arrived in the Dominican Republic, I ran hotels for the Otasa company when it existed in the U.S. I also worked for Meliá. If we focus on 1992 to date, I landed here with Occidental Hotels. I worked there for a while and I must say I´m grateful for having had the opportunity of working for good and big companies, the places I´ve cut my entrepreneurial teeth in.
I ran Villas Doradas, Playas Doradas and Flamenco for Occidental Hotels in Puerto Plata and Punta Cana-Bavaro. Then I moved to Spain in 1991 to open the Fuente Aventura Hotel there. And my family, especially my daughter, was very homesick, so now I´m back in the Dominican Republic.
I returned in the year 2003, first working for the Coral Hilton Hotel, and it´s been little more than a year and a half since I moved to the Sun Village Group.
Q.- What kind of development do you expect for this hotel group and what destinations it´s going to invest in?
A.- For the time being, we´ll remain focused on the Dominican Republic because, and speaking form a hotelier´s standpoint, we´re a small company and we prefer to keep the HQs clustered in just one country. As a matter of fact, those offices are the ones that make costs soar.
Our commitment is to open one hotel every year, and so far we´ve managed to accomplish that goal. It´s not only about the opening of new lodgings, but also the refurbishment of existing facilities. For instance, the Sun Village Hotel in Cofresi jumped from 200 to 300 rooms in the course of two years. We´ll add 40 two-bedroom junior suites in the near future and there´re plans to stretch accommodation to as many as 420 rooms by December 2006.
Based on this strategy, we´re determined to stay put in the Dominican Republic. There´s a long way to go inside the Dominican Republic, a number of untapped travel destinations for us, like Bayaribe or Samana, where we need to draw a bead on before moving to other destinations in the region.
Q.- Have you toyed with the possibility of expanding toward the continental Caribbean?
As I said, this is a Canadian company. For a small group like ours is a whole lot easier to remain in the Dominican Republic than to stretch out to other destinations in the area, at least as long as we continue being a company this small.
Q.- What´s the volume of investment –in U.S. dollars- your company is dealing with?
A.- The latest investment volume we reported was the all-out remodeling of the Juan Dolio Hotel and the hotel we run in Cofresi. The price tag for both investment was $20 million each.
Q.- Who´s your representation in Europe?
A.- We don´t have representation in Europe. I know all markets are welcomed to come aboard, but we´re zeroing in on the U.S. and Canadian markets. For instance, we don´t deal with Spanish tour operators because we understand it´s too hard for Spaniards to visit Puerto Plata. There´re virtually no charter flights from that market. However, we´re focused on the British market and the Finnish market in the winter. Yet we don´t have a representative in Europe.
Q.- What´s the most important America-oriented tour operator you´re doing business with?
A.- Liberty Tours is no doubt is one of the heavy guns. We´re also dealing with a number of small tour operators that work with U.S. tourists as well. It´s somewhere between 30 to 35 tour operators in all we´re talking about. Some are small and others are midsized travel companies.
Q.- What´s the average price of your rooms?
A.- The price depends on the time of year, even on the category of the room. For example, a good price for a room in the high-peak season could be in the neighborhood of $75.
