It is a pleasure to present on this new website a stronger Madrid Hotel Business Association, with more realities and aspirations than ever, with renewed enthusiasm to provide the service that makes our city, our community, one of the main tourist destinations in the world. We have left behind a very hard period for us, a crisis from which we will only keep the good things, which were also there, such as the solidarity and generosity shown by our associates. Now it is time to work with new objectives on the horizon and with the rigour and professionalism that they deserve.

This website is the showcase for the work already being done by the association for the more than three hundred establishments that make up the association, as well as for the wide range of services offered by this business group, both for those who visit us and for those who live here. And it is also the medium in which our customers and suppliers will find new initiatives with which we want to continue to be at the forefront of the hotel offer and anticipate their wishes and needs.  Likewise, the members-only area of the website, our common work centre, where we share information, analysis and knowledge that make each of us more competitive day by day, has been modernised with a redesign and new functionalities that will enhance its efficiency.

We have very important projects ahead of us, such as the launch of the public-private collaboration body for tourism promotion, the reactivation plan for the hotel sector in Madrid and the creation of the AEHM Tourism Intelligence Observatory, which was created with the aim of being an essential reference point for how the sector is evolving, with reports on occupancy, new establishment openings, RevPar monitoring, etc. We also want to promote our destination with other destinations in the world. We also want to promote our destination with other agents in the sector, coordinating our efforts to promote the actions we carry out.

In the defence of the interests of our members, we will continue with our efforts to achieve an adequate regulation of the Tourist Accommodation Units (VUT) or the activity of the OTAs, and we will continue to hold informative webinars on the most relevant issues that affect us, such as new regulations, new tools to manage our establishments or the latest trends in the sector. Among the relevant legal developments, those related to the European funds for economic recovery will undoubtedly stand out, on which our members will be provided with timely and detailed information.

Finally, the success of the first edition of the Traveling for Happiness Awards, with which we highlighted the actions carried out in terms of social and environmental commitment, encourage us to continue promoting and rewarding Social and Corporate Responsibility in our sector. Last but not least, I would like to mention the Subsidised Training Programme that we agreed in April 2021 with the Madrid Chamber of Commerce, which demonstrates our commitment to the ongoing training of our employees.

These are just some of the contents of the current agenda of the sector that justifies more than ever the task of this Hotel Business Association of Madrid, which renews and reinvents itself every day, to be more useful to its members and to the community that welcomes it.

Mr. Gabriel García Alonso
President of AEHM