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Waltz has pushed SSIH even further into such growing markets as the U.S. Now he is talking about diversifying. Omega has developed a three-beam laser welding system that it may market, and is looking into the possibility of assembling its timepieces in Latin America and other areas where labor costs are low.
World Hotelier
Francisco ("Paco") Meliá, 32, is the grand young man of Spain's biggest industry: tourism. His company has 18 hotels in Spain, and eight others are in the advanced planning stage or under construction there. Not content to let his chain's gains fall mainly in Spain, Paco is going international. Ground has been broken or bought for 15 more hotels in cities from Acapulco to Baghdad.
Tourism runs in Francisco's family. His father, Don José Meliá Sinisterra, now semiretired at 61, founded the family's travel conglomerate in 1947. Today it includes Francisco's hotels as well as a couple of family businesses: a thriving real estate company and one of the world's five largest travel agencies, Meliá Viajes. Paco Meliá has been running the hotels, keystone of the family fortune, since he was 23. He scouts his own sites, arranges his own financing and promotes promising employees rapidly. "We are combining the American business approach with European service," he says. "We are fighting to avoid that impersonal atmosphere that comes with big hotels. So far I think we have succeeded."
The Meliá chain pioneered the "apartotel" concept in Spain. Because the country has only a limited capital market, the Meliás put together groups of individual investors to finance new construction. Instead of shares in the venture, each investor got a suite of rooms that he either held for his own use or had the Meliás rent out for him. At present, three Meliá hotels operate on this principle. On each of its facilities, Meliá Hotels takes 15% of net profit in return for its management efforts.
Francisco Meliá's international expansion program dwarfs the entire family's present holdings. The Egyptian government has chosen Meliá to take over management of the Semiramis and Shepheards, two famed Cairo hotels that have seen better days. Meliá has also acquired land in Paris and London. His company is building hotels in Mexico, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and other parts of the Caribbean. "The Latin American market is a natural for us," says Paco, who hopes one day to build in Eastern Europe and Israel. "Tourism is a business for the future. Today we are just halfway there."