With roots in Mexico City about 50 years ago, Grupo Posadas is a true home-grown Mexican business. Today, the company has 168 hotels, with 50 more in development, including 26 that are currently under construction.
Enrique Calderon, CEO for Grupo Posadas, says the plan is to have 300 hotels by 2020. Notable projects include a new Live Aqua in San Miguel Allende, scheduled to open in September, and an Explorean resort coming to Tulum sometime next year. We had an opportunity to chat with Calderon and hear more about the company’s brands.
Can you start by sharing a brief description of some of Grupo Posadas’ brands?
Our most famous brands in the U.S. are Fiesta Americana and Grand Fiesta Americana. These hotels are all over Mexico, and they welcome many visitors from North America every year. Other important brands for the U.S. include Live Aqua, which is an upscale brand focused on the senses, and Explorean, which we call soft-adventure resorts. La Coleccion is another significant brand for travel agents. This is a collection of our best beach resorts — from the Fiesta, Grand Fiesta, Live Aqua and Explorean brands — that offer a great experience for every type of guest, including foodies, families, groups and more. La Coleccion has an agent education program and a rewards program, too.
Tell us more about La Coleccion Rewards.
La Coleccion Rewards is an agent loyalty program that provides free nights and other benefits, as well as cash incentives. Agents love that we pay out the cash reward at the time of the booking, instead of waiting until after the guests visit. We do it that way because we trust our agents. In fact, the whole program is based on a level of trust we feel toward travel agents, and how important they are to the success of our company. We think this is the best program in the market, and it has been very successful.
What’s the plan for expanding Grupo Posadas in the future?
Right now, we have about 4,000 rooms in total, and by 2020, we’ll have 10,000. That’s more than double. And our growth is not just in Mexico, but also in the Caribbean, including the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Jamaica. We want to have a brand for everyone, but it’s crucial that we don’t have a cookie-cutter feel. It’s very important to today’s travelers that they understand what makes a property unique and what special experiences they can have there.
Grupo Posadas is a very Mexican hotel company; why venture to the Caribbean?
We see the Caribbean as a great opportunity because operating a hotel there is fairly similar to running one in Mexico, so it’s easy for us to adjust. Also, we have very strong training programs in Mexico, which helps make sure the overall service is up to our standards. We see an opportunity to export this Mexican philosophy of service to the Caribbean, making sure it’s up to our standards.
What advice do you have for agents who might be dealing with nervous clients concerned with the negative media coverage of Mexico?
Perception is king, but it’s not always reality. For instance, when I go to Chicago, my perception is that I’m totally safe. Because in Mexico, we never really hear any negative news about Chicago.
But even though the size of the population in Los Cabos, for example, is very small, it gets covered by media all over the world; not many places with such a small population receive so much international exposure. So, even isolated issues in Los Cabos are going to be talked about everywhere.
Yet despite the negative perception of certain places in Mexico, tourism from North America grew in 2017, along with European visitation. Agents who are facing perception problems should talk to their customers after they return from Mexico. Then they can share those positive comments with other customers.
Grupo Posadas has been around a long time. What is the benefit of such longevity?
As a company, we’ve been around so long we have people who came as kids, and now they are coming back with their own kids or even grandkids. We also have many employees who have more than 25 years of experience — and if you treat staff right, they will treat your customers right. There is a lot of passion for our brands.
One guest actually started an online group called Live Aqua Lovers that has almost 8,000 members. The DNA of the company is pure hospitality, and we have been doing that for a long time.
The Details
Grupo Posadas
www.posadas.com
