Fosun’s tourism division wants to bring a minimalist hotel to Portugal
Fosun Tourism Group owns Club Med and in 2019 acquired Thomas Cook. Although the Fosun Group has investments in Fidelidade, the Luz Saúde group and Millennium BCP, the tourism division, namely FTC Hotels, does not yet have units in Portugal, something that could change soon.
“We want to have a hotel in the next two, three years in Portugal, but if possible, have it next year, that is, find a partner who wanted to convert their concept to ours and do it next year”, he revealed to Lusa Tiago Venâncio, from FTC Hotels, who is part of the Fosun Tourism Group.
On the sidelines of the conference ‘The Resort and Residential Hospitality Forum’ (R&R), taking place in Vilamoura, Algarve, the hotel expansion director said that the goal is an area of Lisbon, Algarve or Alentejo – an area that fits the concept of “off” – but also the Azores. “Nature, beach and the urban concept in Lisbon”, he highlighted.
Being Portuguese, assuming they know them as “individuals of the country” and where there are “many demand and supply exchanges” that can be unlocked with the concept they want to implement, very marked by “minimalism”, since they do not make a direct investment, but rather working with international or local partners want to make this investment.
The type of ‘design’ implemented is the ‘minimalist Boho’, with a “back to basics”, he explained, where the decoration is not “excessive” so that it does not serve as a distraction to what the customer will do: “reconnect with you own “resting and enjoying what the location and the hotel have to offer and” disconnecting from urban concerns, he stressed.
The Casa Cook concept units already installed in the Mediterranean area have between “80 and 150 rooms” in a dynamic that revolves around a central point where customers “connect with each other”, he noted.
Despite the name ‘resort’, in practice, the units are not located on the first line of the sea, rather trying to “create that feeling” without this location, he explained.
According to the official, whoever bets on the concept in Portugal will have a guarantee that a distribution platform is “different from the traditional”, not provided so “dependent on ‘booking.com'”, in addition to the “strong” dynamic with customers. Two “very distinctive” elements, he argued.
For Tiago Venâncio, a strong presence of the concept on social networks is also evaluated by the type of reservations, since, with a year and a half of existence, “more than a third” happens directly on the platform itself.
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