Meliá Hotels International And The Palma Aquarium Foundation Sign An Agreement To Help Protect An Endangered Species

• The company will take part in a project to protect loggerhead turtles
• Both organisations will work together on other actions to raise awareness and boost research in marine conservation

Meliá Hotels International signed an agreement today with the Palma Aquarium Foundation to help protect the endangered loggerhead turtle (Caretta Caretta), a further extension to the company's environmental commitments and focus on the conservation of biodiversity.

The loggerhead turtle is considered an endangered species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and is found in some of the locations where Meliá has significant operations, including Mexico, where the company already helps protect its nesting grounds on various beaches. The Balearic Islands is also an important feeding and growth area for the loggerhead, leading to a high concentration of young adult turtles.

In line with the company's commitment to help promote sustainable tourism, Meliá Hotels International will cooperate with the Palma Aquarium Foundation in protecting turtles, increasing research and raising awareness. With this project Meliá supports the Marine Recovery Center of Palma Aquarium, a service managed by the Consortium for the Recovery of the Fauna of the Balearic Islands (COFIB), an agency belonging to the Area of Environment, Agriculture and Fisheries of the Government of the Balearic Islands.

Internationally, Meliá will finance the stay and training of a Palma Aquarium Foundation biologist in turtle nesting camps in Cabo Verde to be one of the people with experience to manage and carry out joint actions to ensure the greatest possible success of the nesting of sea turtles in the Balearic Islands. Something of great importance since, due to global warming, sea turtles are dispersing towards cooler climates to perform their nests and therefore the nests on Spanish beaches are increasing.

Among the local actions, the company will allow Palma Aquarium Foundation teams access to its hotel facilities to support clean-up operations of turtle habitats. Both organisations also have a strong commitment to raising awareness and increasing education in environmental issues and will support training programmes for hotel employees and suppliers by Foundation team members which will allow them to play a more active role in different stages of the project.

According to Gabriel Escarrer Jaume, Vice President and CEO of Meliá Hotels International, "Meliá Hotels International operates hotels in 45 countries and has a global commitment to sustainability. However, our roots and our heart are Mediterranean, which is why a project which involves something as global as the ocean and as local as the loggerhead turtle, so common in the Mediterranean, is a perfect example of our commitment both to our roots and the environment."

For Antonio Gonzalez, President of the Palma Aquarium Foundation "the collaboration of such an important entity as the Melia Group is a very interesting step to consolidate and continue developing the different activities pursued by the Palma Aquarium Foundation in order to support the defense of the environment and the conservation of species and, above all, to promote the awareness of society ".

In addition to protecting the loggerhead turtle from extinction as a direct consequence of climate change and human activities, the project also aims to combat the causes of biodiversity loss. Among other things, Meliá will thus also highlight the importance of ridding the ocean of plastics and reducing the danger of entanglement or ingestion. Meliá is fully committed to eliminating all single-use plastics in the company by the end of 2019.