The significant shift in the foundations of business power in southern Gran Canaria, first reported by Maspalomas24H, is beginning to take shape. The giants of international hotel ownership and management, who have formed the Canary Islands Hotel Chains Association (Asociación de Cadenas de Hoteles de Canarias), a new employers' platform specifically designed to challenge the hegemony of José Mañaricúa at the head of the FEHT in Las Palmas and Jorge Marichal at Ashotel, are going to request membership in the Canary Islands Confederation of Employers (CCE) in Las Palmas. RIU is involved in the creation of this new employers' association and has an employee serving as its representative on the FEHT Las Palmas leadership board.
The emergence of this organization, jointly promoted by Mallorca's main corporations and the American investment fund Blackstone, introduces an unprecedented fracture in the archipelago's tourism governance. The multinationals' primary objective is to gain a more prominent role in collective bargaining and neutralize the influence of traditional employers' associations in setting labor costs. In a somewhat unusual statement, the new employers' association said it arose due to "great social, governmental, and union pressure" and that it is necessary to "sit down and negotiate improvements for the sector's workers and also for the companies," although without severing ties with Ashotel and FEHT of Las Palmas.
The business alliance brings together major firms such as RIU, HIP (Blackstone's hotel subsidiary), Barceló, Meliá, Piñero, Amresorts, and Iberostar. Although most of these groups are provisionally maintaining their membership in FEHT and Ashotel, the internal rift has become untenable following recent labor reforms. In internal forums, the multinationals are openly criticizing the signing of collective bargaining agreements with fixed annual salary increases of 4%, a percentage they consider detrimental to their overall bottom line if the regulatory logic of the Canary Islands ends up affecting agreements in other national destinations. Interestingly, the Canary Islands-based company Lopesan has chosen to distance itself from the initiative and is not listed in the founding document, despite the lease agreement that operationally links the island company to Blackstone. Lopesan has its own employers' association with Martiñón, called Excelcan.
The new employers' association's immediate objective is to secure legal recognition, enabling it to intervene with full rights and legal standing before the labor courts in future labor disputes. To achieve this position of strength, the new hotel lobby will force its formal admission to the Canary Islands Confederation of Employers (CCE) in Las Palmas and the Spanish Confederation of Employers' Organizations (CEOE) in Tenerife. The hotel chains are aware that the Las Palmas provincial confederation operates on purely financial principles tied to membership dues, which presents an opportunity for foreign capital to gain political influence given the passivity of local business owners in southern Gran Canaria, who have traditionally been reluctant to actively participate in the CCE's representative bodies.
The battle for control of the labor framework is unfolding at a time of peak financial prosperity for the accommodation sector. National and international chains integrated into this movement received tens of millions of euros in public subsidies during the lockdown, subsequently achieving several consecutive years of record-breaking revenue. The diversion of tourist flows caused by geopolitical instability in the Middle East and Ukraine ultimately propelled the Canary Islands' tourism industry to a historic high of 18 million visitors. This macroeconomic tailwind intensifies the pressure on the Las Palmas FEHT (Federation of Hotel and Tourism Businesses), which finds itself cornered by the emergence of this new bloc, demonstrating that traditional organizations are losing traction in the face of the push from institutional capital.
The launch of the association has the administrative backing of key industry executives who are acting as official promoters. The initiative is supported by Feliciano Casado (Riusa II), Óscar Ramos and Pedro Pérez (Tropical Partners / Blackstone), Pilar Parejo (Barceló), María Morales Almagro (Meliá), José Luis Cardell (Hoteles Piñero-Hyatt), Manuel Melenchón and Andrés Oria (Amresort Management), and Alejandro Santos (Iberostar). The organization has established its main headquarters at the Hotel Mencey in Santa Cruz de Tenerife and a secondary location at the Hotel Santa Catalina in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. This regional setup will serve as an operational base while the organizing committee appoints a permanent president to lead the association's entry into the top business circles of the islands.
