Alda Hotels chooses the Dominican Republic to open its first tourist complex outside Spain

The Galician chain Alda Hotels has taken a significant step in its internationalization process by opening its first establishment outside Spain. The company opened Alda Playa Bávaro in the Dominican Republic, a complex of 40 tourist apartments on White Sands Beach in Bávaro, Punta Cana.

Thus, the Dominican Republic marks the beginning of Alda Hotels’ international expansion, with the Caribbean being the first destination that the chain adds to its offer outside the peninsula.

The CEO of Alda Hotels, Alberto Rodríguez Boo, indicated that the project is “risky but exciting, but that cultural and linguistic proximity was key to the choice of Latin America as the first international destination for Alda Hotels, which carried out an analysis of political-economic stability, tourist offer, and Spanish hotel presence in all Latin American countries.”

“Alda operates small establishments. We are not generators of destiny, and we need a stable, safe, and consolidated environment to be able to work on our business model, and the Dominican Republic is very high in the three criteria, with a stable democratic trajectory of more than 40 years, and social structures that are very similar to those of Spain,” explained Rodríguez Boo.

He acknowledged that “although I personally like Southeast Asia a lot, the barriers are much greater. And in the Dominican Republic, in general, we Spaniards are very well received, and there is already a strong community, especially of Galicians, in which we have already fully integrated.”

He said another reason is that “the country receives more than 10 million foreign tourists a year and has a growing domestic demand, which places it among the main destinations in Latin America. And as for the hotel presence of Spanish chains, they account for 65% of the country’s beds, which gives us a strong ecosystem of suppliers, sales channels, trained workers, etc.”

“In short, it is the best place to enter Latin America, without ruling out that in the future we may enter other destinations,” he said, according to a statement from the hotel company.

Regarding the opening process, the founder of the company pointed out that “it has been necessary to adapt to the rhythms, since an opening is always a challenge, and each hotel is different, so even if we have almost 100 openings behind us, new things always happen, and when you change country, culture, ways of working… all that is multiplied. In Europe we are much more about procedures, planning and order, and in the Caribbean we are not and we have to adapt.”

He said that it has also been necessary to overcome several difficulties, mainly the slowness of the administration and administrative processes. “Just as an example, opening a bank account has taken us more than a month. As for the staff, we found a very cheerful, collaborative and willing attitude, but with much lower work rates and versatility than in Spain,” said Rodríguez Boo.

Aware that “it will be time to learn, adapt, and make the most of the available resources.” The large hotel chains may have more capacity to modify the environment and build walls to protect themselves ‘from the wind,’ but we must be the palm tree that bends with the hurricane.”

For the CEO of Alda Hotels, “the Dominican Republic has great synergies” for the chain’s hotels in Spain. On the one hand, we have a seasonality inverse to the European one, and winters are the high season, which allows us to help deseasonalize our income,” he explained.

For this reason, he assured that the hotel group “maintains a clear commitment to this new destination,” a decision that also has other points in favor, such as “the mobility of staff from one side of the Atlantic to the other, thus giving greater job stability to the staff without having to work so much with temporary staff” or the time difference that he sees as an advantage, “because it makes it easier to cover certain support functions from the Dominican Republic during daytime hours when in Spain it is already night.”

In addition, he adds that in our analysis of the demand in the new destination, we found that there is a diversification of customers, “being mostly American and Canadian in the Caribbean, which allows us to have less dependence on European customers and even reduce the risks that our company only has a peninsular presence.”