Jalil Mekouar: "Brazil, Colombia and Argentina, are countries that would very much welcome capital coming from the northern part of the Americas and the rest of the world, for that matter.  And it’s a matter of facilitating that capital flow and helping people understand the different markets.  You know you don’t, obviously you don’t deal the same way if you deal with an Argentinean investor or developer as if you were dealing with a New York based developer.  It’s very, very cultural.  It’s very much understanding the business practices and at the same time bringing the transparency and professionalism that they are looking for but by mitigating the risks.  So we are hoping that having a very strong global network that we’ll be able to bring that to the investment community.”

Kevin Underwood: "We were the master planners for the Olympic Games in London, in fact we helped London win the Olympic Games.  And so on the back of that we’ve now won the Rio Olympic Games.  And we’re providing all of the economic advice, the master planning advice and we’re designing all of the stadia as well, and indeed the landscape design as well, so it’s a great project for us.  In Rio?  The challenges in Rio are speed.  We had six years to do it in London.  They only have four years to do it.  And they’re not as organised, bless them.  But we’re getting there - we’re getting there.  But time is a real issue.  And they’ve chosen to go design and build and that brings another whole series of issues and problems."

María Zarraluqui:  "One of the portfolio of our brands is the premium brands.  We have three type of brands there.  We have the ME brand.  Grand Melía is another classical luxury Brand.  And that is all inclusive, mainly Mexico and Caribbean.  In these three types of brands, each clientele is different.  But they have one thing in common, experienced thriving hotels is what the client – the sophisticated client hotels are looking after .  It’s true that architecture is very important, how the rooms look like, but at the end of the day they want to be surprised.  They want to feel that they’re special and they’re getting a different experience.  So I think that message is that we hospitality groups have to get into the clients’ mind, to surprise them before they arrive to the hotels, to make their experience unique.  So they remember what they have had during their stay, more than if it was black or red, the colour of the room."  

María Zarraluqui: "We have two ways of developing now, a very, I may say, a strong development strategy outside Spain in emerging markets.  We see a very huge potential in Latin America and in particular in Chile, Columbia, Peru and Brazil.  And we see as well a huge potential in Asia.  So we have created our branch there.  We have a corporate office in Shanghai.  And we have developed … doubled our portfolio in just three years.  And in EMEA as well, we still believe, in some countries, in particular in Germany, this is one of our key markets together with UK and France. Well there are some challenges linked to the cultural differentiation between our countries.  We have been quite successful to localise our brand to the Chinese and Asian market.  But you have some barriers at the same time in the first instance.  But one thing that is important about us is that the first hotel we opened international wise after Spain was actually in Bali, were the first international hotel in Nusa Dua.  So we, we’re very much linked with the Asian, feeling the way of hospitality.  So for us it’s a challenge but a known challenge."