How Meliá got here
Gabriel Escarrer Juliá was 21 when he leased his first hotel in 1956. He called the company Hoteles Mallorquines, then Hoteles Sol. The name it trades under today belonged to another man's chain for 31 more years, and Escarrer bought it.
Founded 1956 · Palma de Mallorca, Spain · Last reviewed August 2026
- 1956
A 21-year-old with a lease
Gabriel Escarrer Juliá leases the Hotel Altair in Palma de Mallorca, around 60 rooms, since gone. He leases rather than buys, which keeps the capital requirement down and is, decades early, essentially the asset-light management model the industry later adopted as standard. The company is called Hoteles Mallorquines: Mallorcan Hotels.
- 1984
Hotasa, and the Sol name
Escarrer acquires the 32-hotel Hotasa group and renames the company Hoteles Sol. Sol means sun, which is what it was selling.
- 1987
Buying the name
Sol acquires the 22-hotel Meliá chain, built by the Spanish tourism entrepreneur José Meliá Sinisterra, and takes the combined name Sol Meliá. That is why the group ran two resort brands for years: Sol for casual family beach holidays, Meliá for the upscale resorts and city hotels. The same deal brings its first significant foothold outside Europe, in Bali.
- 1990
Cuba
Meliá enters Cuba and becomes one of the most significant foreign hotel operators on the island, Sol Palmeras in Varadero among the pioneering properties. Cuba goes on to be an exceptionally large part of the international portfolio.
- 1996
The first one to float
Sol Meliá becomes the first Spanish hotel company to trade publicly. Listing has not made it much less of a family business: the Escarrers keep the controlling influence.
- 2000
TRYP, and the cities
Buying the Spanish TRYP chain substantially widens the urban side of the business.
- 2010
TRYP goes to Wyndham
The TRYP brand is sold to Wyndham, though a number of hotels carry on under licensing arrangements.
- 2011
Dropping the Sol
The corporation drops Sol from its name and becomes Meliá Hotels International. Sol survives as a family-resort brand, but the name Escarrer bought in 1987 is now the identity of the whole company.
- 2024
The founder
Gabriel Escarrer Juliá dies in November, aged 89, after nearly seven decades identified with the business. He had already handed executive leadership to his son, Gabriel Escarrer Jaume.
- 2026
Out of Cuba
Meliá completes its withdrawal from its remaining Cuban hotels, citing operational, legal, economic and financial difficulties intensified by United States sanctions. It closes a 36-year chapter that mattered as much to Cuba's resort development as it did to Meliá's.
What the dates leave out
What he knew before he started
Escarrer had reportedly worked in London for Thomas Cook, so he understood how British and Northern European tour operators filled hotels long before he had one to fill. He built the company on it: contracts and guest commitments secured before a property was expanded, so the arrivals were guaranteed. That was a way to grow at a time when a young man in tourism could not easily raise conventional finance.
Three names before this one
Hoteles Mallorquines, then Hoteles Sol, then Sol Meliá, then Meliá Hotels International. The founder's own name was never on any of them, and the one the company ended up with was bought from a competitor.
Flintstones Land
Meliá once ran Flintstones-themed family programmes under an agreement with Warner Bros: children met Fred and Wilma, stayed in themed family rooms and did Stone Age activities. The company also experimented with hotels tied to the Hard Rock concept, well before Hard Rock's own all-inclusive resort business developed under different ownership.
Where Paradisus came from
Unlike the Meliá name itself, Paradisus was not bought from anyone. The luxury all-inclusive brand was created inside the Sol Meliá system in the 1990s, and went on to become the group's Caribbean flagship.
The Mallorca cluster
Meliá 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
Nine brands: Gran Meliá at the luxury end, ME by Meliá for lifestyle and nightlife, Paradisus for the luxury all-inclusives, the core Meliá Hotels & Resorts, INNSiDE for city stays, Sol for relaxed family beach, The Meliá Collection and Affiliated for independent-style properties, and ZEL, the Mediterranean-house concept built with Rafael Nadal.
Everything we read on Meliá
Where the company's own materials disagree with each other, we print both readings rather than choosing the tidier one.