When the Mayor announced that the prestigious hotel chain, Sol Melía had landed in Almuñécar in July 2001, it was with evident pride. Here, he claimed, was evidence that ‘high-class tourism’ was the future for our town. Our off-season lull would disappear with tourists, at last, enjoying our enviable climate all year round. Then Sol Melía left. Strangely enough, the Mayor didn’t see this as a blow.

Then along came Hoteles Senator, owned by Sr. Rossel and owner of the massive hotel in Taramay, Playacálida, which opened in 2004, and snapped up the hotel on San Cristobal, giving birth to Hotel Almuñécar Playa.

The workers rushed to form a union because they had enjoyed good working conditions: two days off a week, etc, and they feared that the new owners would make them sign new contracts with the normal abysmal working conditions in the hostelry trade on our coasts. The new owners agreed – with gritted teeth – to honour the Sol Melía conditions but things soon began to change. Hotel managers came and went, and before long, an atmosphere of foreboding began to permeate.

Then, as we reported in the February edition of the Seaside Gazette, There was uproar over the sacking of eleven permanent staff from the Hotel Playa Almuñécar. All political parties expressed their support at the time for the dismissed staff and the point was brought up in the following Plenary Meeting of the Town Council, where it was agreed to urge the hotel chain to take the workers back. There was talk of making the company return all of the municipal tax concessions that it has enjoyed over the years, but this was not adopted.

The hotel company cited low occupation figures as the reason for the dismissal of the workers, but the union pointed out that there is very little difference between the 2008 and 2009 figures. The workers claim that their dismissal was fruit of the fact that the provincial authorities rejected a request by the hotel chain to change the existing conditions of employment that had been agreed upon by the company, unions and administration.

As to the fate of the hotel, well next year the hotel under its two owners will have been open ten years and therefore the tax benefits that it receives from the town will end. It is thought that the company will take the opportunity to close the hotel during the winter, as it does with the sister hotel, Playacálida. If this happens, that will be the end of the Mayor’s claim to a new beginning.

However, all this will come as a breath of fresh air for the town’s veteran small hotels and hostales. These businesses have been going for decades and have been suffering terribly, thanks to the price cutting offers that the larger hotels have been advertising. There was no way that they could compete with such ridiculously low prices.