| SPAIN |
 |
 |
|
|
THE iHi INDEPENDENT
HOTEL DIRECTORY - SPAIN - 2011
Small hotels you'll enjoy staying in
|
|
SPAIN
- España
|
|
|
|
The
iHi SPAIN
independent hotel
guide only lists favourably reviewed small hotels
with character and guest houses offering a calm and relaxing
environment to
travellers. The IHI directory gives
priority to hotels in quiet locations in rural areas, offering good
value for
money, and to town
hotels in historic city centre areas.
iHi welcomes suggestions from
travellers and hotel owners.
|
| The Spanish
hotel market |
Visitors
to Spain can be excused for imagining that the Spanish
hotel market is exclusively dominated by chain hotels specializing in
large concrete tower block hotels on the coast, or just inland from
it.
In reality, hotel infrastructure in
resorts like Benidorm or Torremolinos is not typical of Spain as a
whole. The offer of hotels in Spain is more varied, but as in other
countries the Spanish hotel market has seen in recent years a
development of hotel chains at the expense of independent hotels.
Back in 1996, only 20% of Spain's hotels belonged
to a chain; but already at the time, the number of chain hotels in the
country was starting to grow. Since then, Spain has seen the rapid
development of its own national hotel chains, the largest of which are
Sol Mélia, NH Hoteles, Barceló, and Riu. By 2009, of the 781,000 hotels
rooms in Spain, almost 518,000 were in hotels belonging to chains, and
only 263,000 in independent hotels.
The development of Spanish hotels chians has been has been
helped in part by the specific nature of the Spanish hotel market,
where five star and four-star hotels account for an unusually high
proportion of hotel stays - 47% of overnight stays in 2009
according to official figures, up from 34% in 2000. Though
international tourists contribute a fair share of this figure, the
Spanish themselves tend to stay more readily in four and five star
establishments than do the British or the French when moving round
their own country, a feature that has undoubtedly facilitated the development of
small chains of up-market city hotels throughout Spain.
In 2011, there are some eighty different hotel
chains with operations in Spain, most of them Spanish and many of them
small. However, following the serious downturn in the Spanish economy
since 2007, there have been some rich pickings in Spain for
international hotel chains, and several of the world's leading chains,
including Marriott, Accor (Mercure, Ibis) and
Intercontinental Hotels (Holiday Inn) are currently involved in setting
up in Spain under their own labels, and/or establishing partnerships
with Spanish groups to develop hotels under joint ventures.
One unusual feature of the Spanish hotel market is
the chain of Paradores
nacionales; these are top quality hotels, run by the the
Spanish state, and usually located in historic monuments in urban or
rural locations. The first Parador opened in 1928, setting a
benchmark in refined hotel quality standards that more recent private
up-market Spanish hotel chains have strived to emulate.
However, away from the concrete towers
of the
Mediterranean coast, away from the big cities, with their large and
often glitzy chain hotels, Spain is a country of small hotels, many of
them independent. And this tendency is certain to continue into the
future.
Outside the coastal resorts and the
large cities, the economics of hotel operation are different, and the
clientele is different, or visitor motivations are different. As many
visitors to Spain have learned to their cost, turning up in a small
Spanish town in the expectation that it will have a good hotel, or even
just a hotel, can be a rash experiment. Outside the resorts
and the cities, and away from the main roads where many independent
hotels have set up on account of the guarantee of passing customers,
large parts of Spain are a desert in terms of hotels. Rural Spain does
not have the kind of large network of rural and small town auberges or
inns as do France or the UK, and the hotels that do exist in many
Spanish small towns are often either rudimentary or unexpectedly
luxurious - though more frequently the former than the latter.
Throughout Spain, there are however
hundreds of independent rural and small town hotels; the difficulty is
finding the nice ones. The iHi Spain guide has sought out and selected
just a few such hotels. With the current developing trend for
eco-hotels, many of the nicer small independent hotels can be found in
rural areas, notably in mountainous parts of Spain or other areas of
natural beauty.
Hotel
or hostal?
What
is a hostal? In brief, a Spanish hostal is a simple hotel,
usually the equivalent of a one star or two star hotel without certain
of the required trappings.
While hostales are not the same as the English
word "hostels", they can often cater for a similar backpacker type of
customer; but depending on the environment, and the establishment, they
can on occasions seem more like extremely good value and friendly small
hotels, offering all the comforts of a good two-star or three-star
hotel. In this respect, some hostales are similar to auberges or pensions,
inns or guest-houses. Generally speaking, hostales are small
extablishments, with a maximum of 10 rooms. While travellers looking
for four-star or five-star luxury might turn their noses up at the idea
of staying in a hostal, less demanding travellers could do well to
investigate a hostal if it looks attractive from the outside. It could
end up being a great discovery.
© Independent-hotels.info 2011
|
|
|
|
Free listings
Recommend a
good and calm independent hotel or guest house in France, Spain, Italy
or the UK.
If you run or have stayed
in
a small independent hotel that you think ought to be in this directory,
contact iHi
with details. Send your email to hotels "at" gitelink.com
Maximum
size: 40 rooms, or slightly more in urban locations. Given the
structure of the hotel industry in Spain, and the lack of truly
independent character hotels in a number of historic city centres,
the iHi
Guide for Spain includes some hotels that belong to small chains
specialising in distinctive urban hotels. .
If
you are a hotel owner and have a site that presents your independent
hotel, send us an email
giving details. We will send you further information. iHi
privileges calm hotels in a quiet environment.
|
|