Gabriel Escarrer Jaume

Gabriel Escarrer Jaume represents the second generation of the founding family of what is now Meliá Hotels International, a multinational company present in over 40 countries, with more than 400 hotels open or in the process of opening on 4 continents. 

After graduating from the Wharton School, Gabriel Escarrer Jaume worked at Salomon Brothers investment bank in New York before joining Meliá Hotels International (which at the time was completing the successful IPO of the Group founded by his father, Gabriel Escarrer Juliá, in 1956), completing his training with a tailor-made Postgraduate Programme at ESADE. Escarrer combines a strong strategic vision and financial focus with a purely hotelier vocation, and after joining the company, he led a strong drive to expand and diversify the Group's business model, providing Meliá with greater financial strength in an increasingly complex environment in the international tourism sector, as well as a solid competitive position.

Jaume has also been driving a major cultural and organisational change, with a clear focus on sustainability and talent and people management skills, as well as digitalisation and innovation, key levers for dealing with the major transformations that the sector has been undergoing since the beginning of the 21st century After the Founder resigned his executive powers in 2016, initiating the generational handover process, Gabriel Escarrer Jaume became the Group's first executive, leading a process of financial consolidation and business model evolution that made Meliá Hotels International more resilient and enabled it to be better prepared for the major disruption that the COVID-19 pandemic would cause throughout the tourism industry in 2020 and 2021. The succession process culminated in June 2023, when Escarrer Jaume was appointed Executive Chairman after the Founder stepped down as Chairman of the Board and was appointed Honorary Chairman, a position he would hold with pride and devotion until his death in November 2024. 

Gabriel Escarrer is rated as one of the 10 best business managers in Spain, the leader with the best reputation in the tourism sector according to MERCO, and one of the best CEOs in Spain according to Forbes magazine. With a strong external projection, since 2019 he has served as President of Exceltur, the Spanish Tourism Business Alliance for Excellence that brings together 30 of the largest tourism groups in the country, assuming an inspirational leadership role at the forefront of the sector and positioning himself as one of its main spokespersons. 

Loyal to the legacy of his father and founder of the Group, Escarrer Jaume is a staunch defender of the values on which the family business is based, and under his leadership, since 2019, Meliá Hotels International is considered an international benchmark in sustainability, being recognised as the most sustainable hotel company in Europe - and the third most sustainable company in the tourism sector globally - according to the Sustainability Year Book of Standard & Poors Global, also obtaining the ‘Top Employer’ Certificate in the Enterprise category for its management of talent and people in the main destinations where the Company is present.