Meliá Hotels International has announced the upcoming opening of the Villa Le Blanc hotel, combining luxury and sustainability under the Gran Meliá brand. The property will be the group's first 5-star hotel on the island of Menorca.

The hotel will have 159 rooms, 14 of which will be Premium and 86 Supreme, with large terraces and porches, characteristic of Mediterranean architecture, which intermingle outdoor and indoor spaces. The Penthouse, Master Swim Up and Presidential Suite offer privileged sea views from their balconies and private pools. Villa Le Blanc, located on Santo Tomás beach, will open its doors at the end of July 2022. 

The hotel is owned by the company Victoria Hotels& Resorts, created in 2021 with the participation of Meliá, Bankinter and other investors who are clients of the bank, with GMA acting as the managing partner.

This new property is the result of the renovation of the former Sol Beach House, carried out by the architect Álvaro Sans. The project has been designed as a prototype of an efficient and environmentally friendly hotel, incorporating state-of-the-art facilities and technologies that will enable it to reduce its emissions by 87%. To achieve this, Meliá and Bankinter have invested almost 30 million euros, of which almost 15% has been allocated to equipping the property with geothermal energy. 

In addition, the hotel will explore alternatives for offsetting the remaining emissions to achieve carbon neutrality, one of the company's goals. In particular, the building's air conditioning systems will use seawater to exchange energy, improving efficiency and reducing electricity consumption by up to 40%.

The property has already been awarded the Rethink prize for the best hospitality sustainability and renovation project by the Habitat Futura group. The group's ambition with this hotel project is "not only to improve the island's ability to attract higher quality tourism, but also to make Menorca an international benchmark for efficient and environmentally friendly hotels".

On the gastronomic front, it will offer a cuisine based on local products and Mediterranean flavours with the S'Amarador restaurant, which will pay homage to the cuisine of its parent restaurant, and the NIVI restaurant, which also offers Mediterranean cuisine. On the other hand, the work and personality of the restaurateur Joan Canals of the Ulises restaurant will be reflected in the Cru restaurant.  The hotel will also have a wellness area with a spa by the French firm Anne Semonin, which offers treatments using vegan cosmetics and natural products.

While the new property is undoubtedly environmentally friendly, it is also socially responsible. Indeed, it will provide more jobs for local residents. While the old hotel had 65 employees, the new luxury hotel will employ over 150 people. 

The Villa Le Blanc-Gran Meliá hotel will be the best demonstration of what the partners of Victoria Hotels & Resorts can achieve together, fulfilling our objectives of renovating and repositioning emblematic hotels to give them a new stage of splendour and multiplying the value they generate for their shareholders and for the destinations. 

Víctor Martí, founder and CEO of GMA

Villa Le Blanc is a dream come true for our company. Carrying out a project like this, which allows us to move forward in the decarbonisation of hotels, and moreover in a place as special as Menorca, a biosphere reserve, is the most tangible result of the strategic commitment that Meliá is making to promote a hotel operator model based on excellence, responsibility and sustainability.

Gabriel Escarrer, Executive Vice President and CEO of Meliá Hotels International

The transformation of this Meliá Hotel International into a "sustainable prototype" is part of a joint operation with Bankinter worth around €200 million to renovate several of the group's hotels on the Iberian Peninsula with a view to repositioning them.