Sol Meliá

Meliá Hotels International, S.A. (formerly Sol Meliá) is a Spanish hotel chain which was founded by Gabriel Escarrer Juliá in 1956 in Palma de Mallorca. It is also known as and referred to by its former name of Sol Meliá. The company is one of Spain's largest domestic operators of holiday resorts and the 17th biggest hotel chain worldwide. Domestically in Spain the company is the market leader in both resort and urban hotels. Currently the hotel chain operates 374 hotels in 40 countries on 4 continents under the brands Meliá, Gran Meliá, ME by Meliá, Paradisus, Innside by Meliá, TRYP by Wyndham, Sol Hotels and Club Meliá.

The origins of the company reach back to 1956, when the then-21-year-old Gabriel Escarrer Juliá leased the Altair Hotel in Palma, Majorca. Over the subsequent years Escarrer took advantage of the island's increasing popularity as a tourist destination for package holidaymakers, adding further properties to the portfolio of his company, Hoteles Mallorquines. The company expanded geographically in the 1960s and 70s, acquiring hotels in the Canaries as well as the other Balearic Islands. After the decline of General Franco's dictatorship, tourism in Spain developed more rapidly and Hoteles Mallorquines aggressively moved onto the Spanish mainland, establishing a presence in much of the country by the early 1980s.

In 1984 the company renamed itself Hoteles Sol (English: Sun Hotels), before establishing itself as the largest hotel chain in the country with the acquisition of the 32 location-strong Hotasa group. Another merger followed three years later as the company combined with the upmarket Meliá chain, founded by Josep Melià i Sinisterra, to form Sol Meliá. The deal increased the geographical scope of the company into the Caribbean, Americas and other parts of Europe.