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Two new hotels will open their doors next summer in Saidia. Managed by the Spaniard Melia, these two establishments will have to face the inertia of a resort which has scared away other managers.
Saidia is holding on, despite a delicate context. Two new hotel establishments will open this summer in the seaside resort. A third is planned for 2018. Supported by CDG and entrusted to management by the famous Spanish chain Melia Hotels International – which is setting up shop in Morocco for the first time – the three units total some 2,000 beds.
The particularity of the newcomer: « Melia Hotels will open its hotels 9 months out of 12 », promised Gabriel El Escarrer, boss and founder of the Spanish group. « The errors of previous projects is that they started with a seasonal concept [operating only four months out of twelve, Editor’s note]. There, there is a change, because we are trying to bring the resort out of its seasonality« , analyzes Youssef Zaki, president of the Oriental Regional Tourism Council. Enough to give a boost to a moribund resort?
Hope for a moribund station
A 150-room club hotel nestled on a golf course, a 396-room “beach hotel”, and a 190-unit seafront hotel residence, all for an investment of one billion dirhams. This is in essence the project announced in 2014 by Melia Hotels and SDS, a company owned by CDG and FMDT – which has become a sovereign fund called Ithmar. To skeptical journalists who questioned him about the choice of Saidia, whose profitability leaves something to be desired, Gabriel El Escarrer responded during a press conference in February 2014 that « the station has not yet reached its critical mass, hence its lack of profitability. But the opportunities it offers are promising« .
Example of opportunities: « It’s not just the sun in Saidia. Water activities and conferences will make the destination known to the European market », argued the boss of Melia Hotels. The chain focuses mainly on welcoming customers nine months out of twelve, while the station has only operated four months a year since its launch. A very difficult bet which had pushed other managers of the pearl of the Oriental to throw in the towel.
Example of a failure
Built on an area of 15 hectares, Oriental Bay Beach in Saidia, owned by H-partners, the SNI investment fund, cost the tidy sum of 600 million dirhams. The luxurious hotel, which has no less than 1,200 beds, or half the capacity of the seaside resort, has struggled to find a manager since 2013. Deeming it unprofitable, the Spanish operator Barcelo folded in 2012. It then condemned Saidia’s flagship hotel to closure.
Faced with a fait accompli, the owner of the walls entrusts the management of Oriental Bay Beach to Atlas Hospitality, a hotel chain which itself belongs to H-Partners. « We were the only ones to open the hotel all winter in a resort that only operates in summer, but it didn’t work », regrets an Atlas executive. Result: the hotel chain threw in the towel in 2013.
« The establishment has been closed since the end of 2013, because no manager wanted to take over« , Youssef Zaki explained to us last February. « We have not been able to find a satisfactory solution for the Saidia hotel. We had explored a certain number of avenues, but none came to fruition. Moreover, the entire station is devastated », Khalid Cheddadi, head of the CIMR, who has been part of the roundtable since the creation of H-Partners in 2007, recently explained to us.
According to our information, the investment fund tried to sell the establishment by selling it off for 300 million dirhams (i.e. half of its investment cost), without success. In summary, eight years after its inauguration, the resort supposed to serve as the flagship of Plan Azur has only seen the opening of three hotels, one of which has been closed for four years.
Waiting for the others
« We must strengthen litter capacity to attract tour operators », suggests the president of the regional tourism council. This is also the objective of the SDS. After the arrival of Melia Hotels, the CDG subsidiary launched a call for expressions of international interest at the end of 2016 to attract new investors. « As part of the continued development of the resort, SDS now wishes to select one or more hotel developers for the development of 3 plots of developed land. These plots of land are located on the seafront and are intended to accommodate 4 or 5 star category hotel units, managed by internationally renowned management brands », indicates the document. The outcome of the appeal has not been communicated. Contacted by Telquel.ma, the SDS did not respond to our call.
source: as is
