Barceló Hotels Sees Travel Agents as Key to U.S. Market Growth

Spanish-owned Barceló Hotel Group is putting U.S. travel agents front and center in a drive to grow its U.S. leisure market as it expands its portfolio of hotels globally. In the past two years, the hotel company has doubled its budget for travel agent programs.

Focusing on U.S. travel agents makes sense for Barceló Hotel Group, given its ownership, said Juan Pérez Sosa, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Barceló Hotel Group in the U.S. The hotel firm’s parent company, vertically integrated Barceló Group, owns hundreds of travel agencies in Spain (as well as several tour operators and receptive operators).

“We know how travel agencies work. In the U.S., my team has as a priority working very closely with travel agents. We rely on agents,” Pérez Sosa told Travel Market Report.

First, the hotel company has to make itself known here. While Barceló has been in business since 1931, it does not own any hotels in the U.S., so awareness of the brand is limited, said Pérez Sosa, who works out of the firm’s Miami offices.

The brands and properties
Barceló Hotel Group’s core portfolio of properties is in Mexico, the Caribbean, South America and Europe, and includes both four- and five-star resorts and city hotels.

In 2015, the firm acquired Occidental Hotels & Resorts, significantly expanding Barceló’s presence in Mexico and the Caribbean while also setting the stage for the repositioning of Barceló properties under four brands: Royal Hideaway Luxury Hotels & Resorts, Barceló Hotels & Resorts, Occidental Hotels & Resorts, and Allegro Hotels.

The brand diversification has involved both the renaming and renovation of properties. One highlight is the rebranding of the former Occidental El Embajador in the Dominican Republic as a Royal Hideaway Hotel. The iconic luxury hotel in Santo Domingo also is undergoing a $40 million renovation project that is nearly complete.

Royal Hideaway is Barceló’s top-tier luxury brand and now encompasses nine destination hotels. In addition to El Embajador, they include the adults-only Royal Hideaway Playacar on Mexico’s Riviera Maya, as well as seven properties in Spain.

The group’s largest brand is Barceló Hotels & Resorts, defined by the company as “upper upscale” and currently at 73 properties, including 26 in Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America; 42 in Europe; and a handful elsewhere.

The Occidental Hotels & Resorts brand includes 44 “upscale” properties, with the largest concentrations in Spain and Mexico.

The “upper midscale” Allegro Hotels, aimed at a younger audience, includes two hotels in Mexico and two in Spain.

Travel agent programs and rewards
Barceló Hotel Group’s stepped-up focus on U.S. travel agents includes renewed investment in two cornerstone agent programs, and the expansion of its U.S. business development management team from four to 10 BDMs, Pérez Sosa said.

One of the two agent programs is Barceló Partner Club, or BPartner — an online loyalty program that rewards agent bookings, including those made through tour operators, with points redeemable for free stays at any hotel worldwide, as well as gift cards and cash. 

Recent enhancements to BPartner include additional gift card choices; increases in points earned per brand and room category and for group bookings, plus immediate confirmation of hotel stays booked with points. BPartner’s online platform, an improved version of which will be launched this winter, gives agents access to current promotions and an agent training program.

Barceló Agents is the hotel group’s online booking portal for agents. Reservations made by Barceló Agents are automatically registered in the loyalty program.

Pérez Sosa noted that the agent booking portal offers the same room rates found on Barceló’s consumer site, and he emphasized that Barceló has no plans of offering lower rates to consumers who book direct.

“We invest four times more in the offline world, basically with agents, than in other segments. We trust in this segment, and we don’t have any reason to change. We are not trying to grow direct business,” he said.

Continued portfolio growth
Barceló Hotel Group currently includes 230 properties in 20 countries, and its portfolio of properties continues to grow.

This summer, the group acquired the 500-room Krystal Grand Reforma Uno in Mexico City and reopened it as a five-star Barceló México Reforma. By year-end, the company will have expanded by nearly a dozen properties, through both acquisitions and management contracts. The growth will include hotels in Mexico, Spain, Italy and United Arab Emirates.

Pérez Sosa anticipated that the pace of expansion will continue over the next few years. New additions in 2018 will include two properties in Dubai; as well as hotels in Spain, Cape Verde, Morocco and Guangzhou, China.

Not all of Barceló’s expansion is under the umbrella of its four hotel brands. In April of this year, Barceló Group acquired 100 percent ownership in Crestline Hotels & Resorts, which manages 115 hotels throughout the U.S. under leading brands, including Hyatt, Hilton and Marriott.