About the Client: Meliá Hotels International

Meliá Hotels International, established in 1956 by Gabriel Escarrer Juliá in Palma, Mallorca, stands as Spain’s premier hotel chain and a global hospitality leader. With over 380 hotels spanning 40 countries, Meliá operates iconic brands such as Gran Meliá, ME by Meliá, and Paradisus, catering to luxury and urban travelers.

In 2024, the company generated $2.01 billion in revenue, securing its position among the top 20 hotel chains worldwide. Its extensive footprint across Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia underscores its commitment to innovative guest experiences.

Meliá’s strategic focus on high-growth markets, particularly China, has driven its pursuit of digital transformation to capture the dynamic Chinese traveler segment, known for its unique digital behaviors and preferences.

IT Consultis (ITC) partnered with Meliá Hotels International to build a foundational omnichannel digital transformation strategy tailored for Chinese travelers.

Goals & Objectives

By aligning with China’s digital landscape and ensuring compliance with the Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL), we aimed to position Meliá as a preferred choice for Chinese travelers, fostering brand loyalty and driving direct bookings.

IT Consultis conducted a comprehensive audit to identify critical areas for improving Meliá’s digital strategy, structured around 4 strategic pillars to ensure a cohesive transformation:

• User Journey Excellence: Develop omnichannel user journeys optimized for Chinese travelers, leveraging private channels like WeChat to enhance data ownership, deliver personalized brand experiences, and maximize conversion rates. 
• China Digital Enablers Optimization: Strengthen localized digital platforms, such as WeChat Mini Programs and Chinese websites, to provide scalable, culturally relevant solutions that align with Chinese travelers’ behaviors and preferences.  
• Business Systems Integration: Create a unified technological framework that integrates Meliá’s global and China-specific systems, ensuring operational efficiency, real-time data synchronization, and PIPL-compliant data handling across properties. 
• Meliá Loyalty Transformation: Revitalize the Meliá Rewards program to drive customer retention, integrating it across all booking channels to encourage recurring purchases and foster brand advocacy through data-driven rewards.

These objectives aimed to unify Meliá’s digital presence, establish consistent branding across its hotel portfolio, and enhance engagement with Chinese travelers, laying the foundation for a scalable and market-tailored strategy.

Solutions

Comprehensive China Digital Transformation Report 

IT Consultis initiated the project with an exhaustive analysis of Meliá’s digital ecosystem, conducting 30 in-depth interviews with global and China-based stakeholders. 

Covering a wide range of roles (Social media & branding, IT & Distribution or even Marketing & partnerships), these interviews allowed us to engage directly with key figures (such as Meliá’s Global Director of Social Media and the Regional Sales Director), gaining a more comprehensive understanding of their internal business processes, technology infrastructure, key challenges, and strategic goals.

This work of interviewing and understanding Meliá's expectations then enabled us to evaluate Meliá’s presence across critical Chinese channels, including Baidu (focusing on its SEO), WeChat and OTAs like Ctrip, Fliggy, and Meituan. 

We also benchmarked against competitors such as Marriott, Accor and Hilton to formulate short and long-term strategic recommendations.

Our findings revealed key opportunities for growth: enhancing localization on Meliá’s global website, unlocking the full potential of WeChat Mini Programs, streamlining the management of its WeChat ecosystem, and leveraging Marketing Automation, Social CRM (sCRM), and Loyalty Program enhancements to deepen customer engagement.

To address these opportunities, we proposed a tailored strategic roadmap to better engage with Chinese travelers, focusing on these following elements:

• Marketing Automation & Social CRM: Implement sCRM tools to automate and personalize user engagement on WeChat. 
• WeCom: Use WeCom for one-to-one client communication and relationship building 
• WeChat Mini Programs, Websites, and APPs: Focus on an “all-in-one” Mini Program and localized website instead of native apps. 
• Loyalty Program: Localize and integrate Meliá Rewards with Chinese OTAs to boost retention. 

Strategic Recommendations for Meliá Digital Transformation 

To enhance Meliá’s digital interfaces, IT Consultis team recommended, as a first step, a comprehensive UX/UI overhaul, focusing on WeChat Mini Programs and a localized Chinese website. Our suggestions focused on these key takeaways: 

• Redesigning user flows to reflect Chinese traveler preferences.
• Restructuring the WeChat Mini Program as an “all-in-one” platform, enabling bookings, loyalty program access, and other services within a single interface.
• Optimize the localized website for mobile-first Chinese users to reduce friction in user journeys and enhance accessibility for Chinese audiences.

In a second step, we helped Meliá define its strategy to activate long-term value through scalable and data-driven enhancements, with a roadmap centered on these 5 elements: 

1. Unlocking new growth levers, optimizing existing assets, and fostering a unified digital brand presence across China. 
2. Integrating a Social CRM (sCRM) to support enterprise-level marketing automation within WeChat.  
3. Integrating WeChat Official Accounts and Mini Programs to address multi-brand consistency, operational efficiency, and enable centralized data collection while preserving hotel-level autonomy. 
4. Introduce parametric QR codes—used at hotel check-ins, dining areas, and event spaces— to bridge gaps between online and offline experience (O2O), drive WeChat follower acquisition, and build the private traffic ecosystem. 
5. Introduce analytics dashboards to monitor Meliá KPIs, track user interactions, and optimize content and campaign effectiveness across all touchpoints. 

Results 

IT Consultis empowered Meliá to lay the foundation for expanding from 8 to 100 hotels in China by building a scalable and locally tailored digital strategy.

Our roadmap positioned Meliá to meet Chinese travelers’ expectations across every touchpoint. Thanks to these efforts, Meliá streamlined internal operations and strengthened cross-channel consistency.

These advancements made it easier to convert digital interactions into bookings and recurring loyalty-driven revenue streams, while enabling rapid scaling across the Chinese market. 

With the digital transformation report, Meliá now holds all the cards to establish a long-term presence and develop its business across China and the APAC region.