UJ #13 - Health & Wellness

INTERVIEW
The hotel has 17
treatment rooms, 4 hydro
massage rooms and 1
full services room.
llers. How do you offer this “spirit” of wellness to
those who have come here to work?
Luis: Actually the hotel attends a very diverse public.
One of the things we have found is that more
or less eighty percent of those who use the spa are
from Lima; its main market is the inhabitants of Lima.
For example, what executives look for above all is a
relaxing massage, or water treatments; but in general,
treatments lasting around 45 minutes. We are studying
whether we can introduce a treatment to recover
from jet lag, because an urban hotel that receives travellers
from all over the world should have some sort
of treatment for that.
Another market for the hotel consists of events
and conventions. Do you feel that Lima’s new
convention centre (C.C.) will take business away
from you?
Luis: We haven’t felt any effect up to now. The year
it might have done was 2016, with the APEC meeting,
which was a very important business. Indeed
we operated in the convention centre (C.C.) because
so far the C.C. does not have an operator. In truth,
we have not felt any major disruption, the only client
we thought we were going to lose was the Peruvian
State, for obvious reasons. The C.C. is a positive development
on the one hand and a competitor on the
other. It is positive for bookings because we are the
nearest hotel and also the largest; so when groups
or events use it as a base they are going to have to
use our hotel, and that helps us. It is a competitor for
events involving up to one thousand or two thousand
people, bigger events we would not have been able
to host anyway.
Its proximity is a benefit, then.
Luis: For large events it is an advantage having it so
close. We believe it has a different profile, the C.C.
will attract more city-wide events. Pan-American or
regional events; there will be many regional and provincial
events in Lima. We believe that our market for
events —and we are talking about more or less three
hundred thousand covers per year— will remain fairly
quiet. The Swissôtel, and any other hotel with its own
conference centre, is really our competition.
And how do you see the changes in Lima affec-
Jose Orihuela / PROMPERU