Bern Hotels & Resorts, a rich history and a promising future

Bern Hotels & Resorts is one of the main Central American hotel companies with a rich history and a great future ahead. To learn in detail about the firm's current situation, during SAHIC we have exclusively interviewed its President Herman Bern. We share his answers below: 

What has been the origin of the company?
“Like many of the large hotel companies, we started with a real estate company, and we still are today. More than 60% of our turnover is provided by this business division. The company has more than 45 years dedicating itself mainly to the construction of residences and residential condominiums. We have more than 200 buildings that we have built, mainly middle/high class range, including some luxury ones. 22 years ago we started in hospitality with the opening of the Intercontinental hotel in Panama City. We now have the Westin Playa Bonita, Gamboa Rainforest Resort, Crowne Plaza Panama Airport, Intercontinental Miramar, Crowne Plaza Panama, Holiday Inn at the Panama Canal, Le Meridien Panama, and The Westin Panama.  

How has the experience been during the pandemic?
The most difficult thing was the work suspension of the collaborators, in addition to the closure of the hotels, we have reopened all except the Marriott Plaza, in addition to clearly not having income.

What promotional actions are you carrying out to reverse this situation?
We are resuming operations, we reintegrated the sales team more than a year ago and it is a process similar to an opening. At the same time, we are working with our long-standing clients, as well as new ones, to boost demand, looking for new markets, and the idea is to once again activate segments such as MICE, resuming everything that had been cancelled.

Before the pandemic, what were your main source markets?
The United States represents 40% and is the largest market followed by Latin American countries. The strongest market in this region is Colombia, but with 5% and then the rest is a small portion but when you add Latin America it totals 50%, 40% the United States and 10% the rest of the world, which is usually Europe.

What is your vision of the immediate future?
We feel that three or four months from now we are going to talk about recovery, which should be reaching a good 90% of what it was in 2019, the MICE segment is going to take longer to return to the numbers it had.

What is your main differential value in such a competitive market?
We have an offer that covers every type of need, from the tourist or corporate point of view. We have a variety of brands that we are working with, we also have properties in excellent locations and we feel that we follow a leading company with great support.