Esther Barranco
Madrid, April 28 (EFECOM).- Room Mate is in talks with two European hotel chains to incorporate 32 establishments, which add to the 22 operating ones, with which its executive president and founder, Kike Sarasola, believes it can achieve its goal to reach 100 hotels in two or three years.
In an interview with Agencia EFE, Sarasola also explained that other new hotels will soon join the brand, especially in Italy, where they are negotiating with five, two of them in Milan, two more in Venice and one in Rome.
The chain, which has 22 hotels and nearly 1,700 rooms spread across five countries, is owned by the Angelo Gordon fund and the Westomond chain, both American, which entered the capital in July 2022 and assumed the personal participation of Sarasola and of Sandra Ortega (daughter of Amancio Ortega) after the bankruptcy, although they kept him as top executive.
“We are growing by searching hotel by hotel, with possible group purchases of 10-20 hotels,” among which the two operations in Europe stand out, one of them with 10 hotels and another, with 22, from companies that do not operate in Spain.
The chain has opened a new line of business, with the Collection brand, in the four-star plus segment, to which it has currently incorporated two hotels, one in Barcelona and another in Milan, but to which three more will soon be added. , located in Italy.
In fact, says Sarasola, of the new ones who are going to join the company, the majority (around 60%) will go to this new brand, which maintains the characteristics of the Room Mate, such as being in city centers and having decorated by first-rate names, but they go up a notch, aimed at clients around 40-50 years old with good purchasing power.
“Our clients in these hotels, especially Americans, are willing to pay more. They don’t want the ostentatious luxury of a five-star hotel, they want quiet luxury. They don’t want to pay 1,500 euros per night to sleep, shower and have breakfast, but they do want to pay 500 with about fantastic services,” he says.
He is “delighted” with the owners of the company, although he understands that Angelo Gordon could exit the capital within a period of 5-10 years, because it is in the nature of the funds, which always enter with an exit vocation, “but I am not “, he assures. He does not even rule out re-entering the shareholding.
He emphasizes the good results of 2023, which raised turnover to 106.5 million, with Italy “skyrocketing” and Spain “evolving very well as well” and highlights that in 18 months the company has gone from being in bankruptcy to being in positive results.
This 2024 will be a good year and in fact in the first quarter they recorded an increase in sales of 10%, although double-digit growth “is not sustainable”, so it will be a stabilization exercise, with increases in the turnover of one digit.
“The year is looking very good, it seems that the wars have not affected it and people prefer to travel rather than buy a car or a house, they want to live from day to day,” he explains.
The forecasts are even good in Turkey, where they have a hotel in Istanbul, because despite the proximity they have not noticed the effects of the instability in the Middle East.
Sarasola is very critical of the sector’s position in relation to tourismphobia, which will unleash a wave of bans, and also of the lack of leadership from both the Government and the sector itself.
“We deserve what happens to us” because “this has been going on for five years and the sector has done nothing to remedy it,” he says.
Hoteliers have waged a “stupid” battle against tourist apartments and against platforms like Arbnb. “It is a ridiculous fight and a waste of time because in Barcelona legal tourist apartments represent only 2.1% of the hotel population.”
“No matter how much they don’t like them, tourist apartments are here to stay. Let’s regulate them, whether they are entire buildings or impose quotas, and illegal ones, of course, are out, but just as I would be against an illegal hotel,” he points out.
He defends the need to stop the excessive growth of tourism, and is radically against “those who believe that it is a wonder that we reach 100 million international tourists annually.”
Sarasola understands that it is difficult to reconcile the desire to travel with preserving balance in city life, but “of course the way is not this race to expand airports and put in more trains.”
He predicts new prohibitions – such as the moratorium on the construction of new hotels agreed in Amsterdam – that could have been avoided if we had acted more proactively.
And what is the way?: “I don’t see that from the sector we have done the work, we must plan, and see with the cities what model they want and analyze solutions. I don’t have the solutions but I don’t see that there are movements to solve it.”
“We must decide if we want a model like Venice, Barcelona or Florence, where they have done nothing, or that of Milan or Malaga,” he explains.
“We have to sit down, because the problem has been knocking on our door for years. We have five cruise ships at the same time in Barcelona, with 50,000 people on the Ramblas and two million people in Venice every day. It’s a horror.”
Milan is a model that is “intelligent, well thought out, it has done very well, it started with the 2015 Expo, because they planned well” and they have managed to spread tourism throughout the year.
Another model is, for the top executive of Room Mate, Saudi Arabia, which has planned “wonderfully.” He says that he attended a presentation on the sector by the Minister of Tourism of that country, Ahmed al Jatib, “and it seemed more like a board of directors of an IBEX company. I don’t see that anywhere here.” EFECOM
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