Miguel Praga

🏖️ Bluesea Hotels and Resorts acquires the Spanish hotel business of Meeting Point, a subsidiary of German giant FTI Touristik, reinforcing its position in the 3 and 4-star vacation segment in Spain. Meeting Point manages 15 hotels with 1,922 rooms across Canary Islands locations including Gran Canaria, Tenerife, Lanzarote, and Fuerteventura. Bluesea, 93.5% owned by Portobello Capital with recent Partners Group investment, has 5,060 rooms and with the acquisition will total near 7,000 rooms, becoming a leading chain particularly in the Canaries with over 3,800 rooms.

✈ Jet2, a British tour operator, launches Jerez de la Frontera as a new destination from Birmingham, Leeds, and Manchester, with flights on Fridays, Tuesdays, and Saturdays respectively throughout the summer. This marks Jet2's first operation in Jerez, adding to their main Spanish destinations like Palma, Alicante, and Málaga. The service includes combined trips along the Costa de la Luz, including Cádiz to Algeciras, targeting a demographic less familiar with Jerez's sherry and mass tourism from central and northern Europe.

✈ South Europe Ground Services (South), a 100% IAG-owned handling company with a majority from Iberia, will expand during the summer season by adding JetBlue, MGA Airlines, and Sichuan Airlines to their portfolio. South will manage over 260 flights for these airlines across various Spanish airports. JetBlue's historical new daily route from Boston to Madrid starts on May 23, with an Airbus A321XLR, and another daily flight from New York's JFK scheduled for summer 2026. MGA Airlines introduced three routes on April 16 connecting Istanbul to Zaragoza, León, and Santiago de Compostela with Boeing 737s. Sichuan Airlines now flies four times a week from Chengdu and Tianfu to Madrid, with around 300 passengers per flight on Airbus A350 and A330 aircraft. Binter and Jet2 expand their frequencies and routes, with Binter adding connections from the islands to Córdoba, Almería, and Badajoz, and increasing flights from Gran Canaria and Tenerife to various Spanish cities. Jet2 extends its presence in Jerez de la Frontera with new routes to Birmingham, Leeds Bradford, and Manchester.