This month Island Hotels Group celebrates its 20th anniversary since starting operations in April 1987.

The past 20 years has seen the group develop from a small hotel employing 25 people with 250 beds in Bugibba to what it is today – a group with four properties totalling just over 2,700 beds and employing over 1,500 people. The group also includes the island’s leading event catering company, Island Caterers, and owns 18 per cent of the Dragonara Casino in St Julian’s.

Island Hotels Group was founded in April 1987 when Winston V. Zahra came out of retirement and formed a company, Bugibba Holiday Complex Ltd, with Nazzareno Vassallo of Vassallo Builders Group.

At that time, the Bugibba Holiday Complex had 250 beds and employed 25 people. This operation was very successful and after just two years the first of a number of expansions the group undertook in the following years started. This extension of the complex included an increase in its bed stock from 250 to 1,000 and took nine months to complete.

In October 1992, Island Caterers was set up under the direction of Winston J. Zahra, who had just returned to Malta after completing a four-year degree in Hotel & Catering management at Portsmouth University.

The objective of the company was to become one of Malta’s leading event catering companies. The growth of this company since 1992 has been excellent and today it is one of the leading event catering companies in Malta that serves an average of 30 events a week.

In 1992, when the group was looking for further expansion in the hotel industry, the opportunity arose to acquire the Salina Bay Hotel in Salina. The purchase of this hotel was secured and work started immediately, under the direction of Winston V. Zahra, to completely gut the old hotel, double the number of rooms, increase the facilities and turn it into one of the leading four-star hotels on the island.

Work started in November 1992 and the hotel, renamed the Coastline Hotel, welcomed its first visitors in March 1994. Since opening its doors the Coastline has been awarded no less than 22 international awards for customer satisfaction by leading tour operators including one in which it was voted the best four-star property in the whole of the Thomson international programme in 1994.

It was immediately after the completion of the Coastline that a French company, which had been given a parcel of land in St George’s to build a hotel, approached the group to see if it was interested in purchasing the land and build the hotel.

After protracted negotiations, the land became the property of the group and work started immediately to build the Baypoint Resort. This major development commenced in November 1995 and 18 months later, in May 1997, it opened its doors as the Radisson SAS Baypoint Resort, a five-star property that was to be the flagship of the group.

The property is wholly owned and managed by Island Hotels Group under franchise agreement with the Rezidor Hotel Group. Like the Coastline Hotel, the Radisson SAS Bay Point Resort has won a large number of international awards for service as well as three awards for operating in an environmentally sustainable way.

The resort is also the only local hotel to have been awarded the Environment Award for Industry in recognition of the extensive work undertaken to ensure that the resort was developed and operated in the most environmentally sustainable way possible.

The following year, the company led a Consortium to take over the Dragonara Casino in which the group holds an 18 per cent stake. The group then consolidated its operation and focused on growing both turnover and profitability.

Following that, 2002 was earmarked for further expansion of the group and led to the purchase of the Golden Sands Hotel from the Fenech family.

Once again, after long and difficult negotiations, the deal was secured. Initially, the plan was to gut the old property and completely refurbish it as a four-star property. Eventually it was decided to bring in the bulldozers and start from scratch to build a unique five-star property in one of the most beautiful parts of the island.

Work on the Golden Sands started in August 2003 and the hotel reopened, as the Radisson SAS Golden Sands Resort and Spa in September 2005.

Two months after it opened, the resort was the venue for one of the most important conferences ever to be held in Malta, the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, better known as CHOGM. The Radisson SAS Golden Sands Resort and Spa is today the flagship of the group.

Commenting on this important milestone in the group’s history, Winston V Zahra, Group Managing Director said he was very proud of the achievements of the group in such a relatively short period of time.

The growth of the group over this period is all due to the hard work, determination and dedication of all the management and staff.

“Our policy has always been to offer our guests very good accommodation, excellent food, service with a smile and value for money. This basis of our strategy, together with carefully planned and sustained growth, has led us to where we are today. We are now looking forward to an exciting future in the years to come,” Mr Zahra said.