How Iberostar got here
The Fluxà family has been in business since 1877, and for most of that time it was not in hotels. It made shoes. What follows is the route from a workshop in Inca to a hundred beachfront properties, including the dates the company's own materials disagree on.
Founded 1877 · Inca, Mallorca, Spain · Last reviewed August 2026
- 1877
A shoemaking workshop in Inca
Antoni Fluxà opens a small shoemaking workshop in Inca, Mallorca. The family stays in footwear for generations, and the shoe business is the reason there is a family business at all: everything below is built on it.
- 1956
Eight travel agencies
The family buys Viajes Iberia, a modest network of eight travel agencies. Working with European and North American tour operators teaches them where travellers actually want to go, which turns out to be the useful part when they start operating hotels two decades later.
- 1979
Into hotels, in Mallorca
Miguel Fluxà enters the hotel business in Mallorca. The Iberostar brand itself appears in 1983, covering seven Mallorcan hotels at the outset. Some of the company's own corporate pages give 1986 as the year the brand was created or consolidated, so its published history is not internally consistent on this point; we print both rather than choose.
- 1993
The first Caribbean resort
Iberostar Bávaro opens in Punta Cana. Until this point the chain is a Mallorcan operation. This is the move that sets up the Mediterranean and Caribbean pairing that still defines where you find an Iberostar.
- 1997
Mexico, and the twin-resort idea
Iberostar Tucán and Quetzal open beside each other in Playa del Carmen, deliberately given different architectural personalities while sharing facilities. It is a pattern the chain repeats later at its bigger complexes, and it is why some Iberostar resorts feel like two hotels wearing one name.
- 1998
An airline of its own
The group launches Iberworld, its own airline. For a stretch the family runs the hotels, the tour operators and the aircraft that get people to them.
- 2005
The fourth generation
Sisters Sabina and Gloria Fluxà join the business, the fourth Fluxà generation to do so. The company remains privately held and family-owned, which is genuinely unusual for a hotel group of this size.
- 2006
Selling the travel business
Iberostar sells much of the outbound travel business to concentrate on hotels. The wider family group returns to aviation later through World2Fly, but the hotel company stops being a tour operator that happens to own resorts.
- 2017
Wave of Change
The sustainability programme starts. It covers ocean health, responsibly sourced seafood, removing unnecessary plastics, waste and emissions, and it is wired into how the hotels are actually run rather than sitting in a brochure.
- 2022
The IHG alliance
Up to 70 beachfront resorts join IHG's booking and loyalty system while Iberostar keeps ownership and operational control. The practical upshot for a guest: an Iberostar can earn and burn IHG One Rewards without being an IHG hotel.
What the dates leave out
First-line, or not at all
Iberostar specialises in what the European trade calls first-line hotels: directly on the beach, or close enough that the distinction stops mattering. That is a siting philosophy rather than a marketing line, and it is the reason an Iberostar often holds a better stretch of sand than the competitor next door.
The tiers, in plain terms
Iberostar Waves is the lively family and couples tier. Iberostar Selection is the step up, with more space and more amenities. JOIA by Iberostar is the luxury tier, and it is what Iberostar Grand was renamed to, so older reviews and booking sites still use the Grand name for the same properties.
Not all of them are resorts
The Heritage category covers historic buildings and culturally significant sites. Iberostar Heritage Grand Perast in Montenegro is an 18th-century palace on the UNESCO-listed Bay of Kotor, which is a long way from a beachfront block in Punta Cana.
The coral laboratory
Iberostar runs a coral laboratory in the Dominican Republic, employing scientists to study coral resilience, keeping coral nurseries and working on reef restoration. For a hotel company of any kind this is an unusually hands-on environmental programme, and it is the part of Wave of Change with scientists and a budget behind it.
The Mallorca cluster
Iberostar is one of four major hotel companies founded by families on the same island. RIU bought its first hotel on Playa de Palma in 1953, the Fluxà family behind Iberostar had been in Mallorca since 1877 making shoes, Barceló started in 1931 with a single bus in Felanitx, and Gabriel Escarrer leased his first Palma hotel in 1956 and built Meliá. A single Mediterranean island produced a remarkable share of the companies that now run the Caribbean's all-inclusive resorts. A fifth Spanish group, Grupo Piñero, reached the same island from the other direction: founded in Murcia, made its name with a hotel in the Dominican Republic, and now runs Bahia Principe out of Palma.
Where it ended up
More than 100 four- and five-star hotels across three continents, and an identity still tied to Mallorca and to one family. A shoe workshop became a travel agency, which became a tour operator, which became an airline, which became one of the best-known Spanish resort chains.
Everything we read on Iberostar
Where the company's own materials disagree with each other, we print both readings rather than choosing the tidier one.