Room Mate: The second lifetime of Kike Sarasola | Business | EUROtoday

Kike Sarasola (Madrid, 1963) has simply arrived from Rome, his new place of residence for half the yr in an effort to analyze enterprise alternatives within the quickest rising nation for the resort chain he presides over. She sports activities an enviable tan and an indestructible smile. She adjustments her shirt to pose for the photographer. She does it with ease and admits that she loves it. The former Olympic rider is kind of a personality inside the sector. Perhaps the one businessman who, after having been concerned in chapter proceedings and shedding his firm, continues to guide the model he based: Room Mate Hotels. And maybe additionally the one one who claims to maintain intact his dream of constructing an emporium of 100 institutions, like when he created it in 2005.

The chain, acquired in mid-2022 by the American funding fund Angelo Gordon and the Canadian supervisor Westmont Hospitality for 57 million euros, faces a brand new part of growth after closing a “record” 2023. With a turnover of 106.5 million euros, 37% above the earlier yr, and with earnings for the primary time in its historical past: 15.7 million. The stability that the brand new homeowners present is likely one of the keys to those good outcomes, highlights the president of Room Mate, derived from the truth that the corporate is ranging from scratch and has no debt “because the house has been cleaned,” he admits. Expensive rents and extra workers have been eradicated, and bills have been managed, he explains, however not earlier than highlighting the nice virtues that the brand new shareholders noticed within the model: high quality requirements much like these of huge resort firms and advertising and marketing that achieves 35% of direct gross sales for which they don’t pay fee, he continues.

And that is how the brand new growth plan is approached, which plans to include 13 accommodations (from the present 22 institutions they are going to leap to 35) within the subsequent 18 months, going from 1,700 to three,600 rooms. At the second, with an funding of 16 million destined for renovations to adapt the buildings to the design necessities that distinguish the corporate. And this progress will probably be not solely primarily based on leases, because the Sarasola resort operated till now “because it had no money,” however “with purchases, rentals or management, since the investors believe in the project,” signifies the manager.

“40% of the growth will come from Italy, where they forgot to fix their two to four star hotels and there are no centrally located, renovated, beautiful and well-priced rooms, so the Room Mate formula is going to work very well” . They are on the lookout for alternatives in Rome, Milan, Naples and Sicily, the place they hope so as to add 3 to five accommodations this yr. They additionally wish to proceed increasing in London (they’ve already purchased one); in Paris, Hamburg, Berlin and Munich, places the place they aren’t current, in addition to in Spain. The native market concentrates 12 of its institutions, whereas in Italy there are six (the final one opened in Venice, which is a vacationer condominium constructing, a product on which the corporate goes to guess), and the remaining 4 are distributed all through Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Turkey.

In addition, the chain goes to launch a second model: Room Mate Collection, a four-star plus they name it, which responds to its purchasers' demand for a “silent luxury, which avoids ostentation”, in line with Sarasola, aimed toward customers of a common age a bit of larger than the remainder and with extra personalised consideration (the two.4 million clients the corporate had in 2023 have been between 25 and 54 years previous, and 91% have been worldwide, principally Americans). For now, they are going to put the Collection model on their Giulia resort in Milan and the Gerard in Barcelona, ​​after which two or three extra of those that are at present a part of Room Mate will be part of and likewise two or three new entrants, says the president, who will current the banner subsequent week on the Berlin sector truthful. These accommodations will probably be round 12% costlier than Room Mate, that are additionally being renovated.

Skyrocketing costs

The firm needs to reap the benefits of the great second within the tourism market, of a buyer who prefers to journey in any respect prices as an alternative of adjusting home or automotive, in love with carpe diem, in line with Sarasola, and which has led to a 12.3% improve in costs. common charges for his or her rooms final yr (though in Florence the rise in common costs has been near 40%, in Rome 28% and in Milan 21%; in these final two cities the will increase in ADR are much like these of Malaga and Madrid). With these efforts, Sarasola hopes to succeed in 150 million in turnover in 2024 and obtain an EBITDA of 24.1 million euros, 8.5 million above final yr.

And this yr goes to be good for the tourism sector, however inferior to 2023, progress. The president foresees a progress of the business of 4% or 5% “because tourist prices cannot be raised any more. Everything comes to a stop. If we don't want to go overboard and break the goose that lays the golden eggs, we all have to stabilize ourselves a little. The market is going to correct itself because there is no family economy that can withstand it.”

The former Olympic rider, whose workplace shows pictures from his sporting days, just isn’t too keen on mea culpa. “I have been on the crest of the wave, I have gone down and I have gone up again,” he says after which solutions that the educational he has drawn from the chapter of his firm is to “continue fighting”, the identical as after the pandemic, “ that took us all ahead.” He blames the chapter on covid-19, on the dearth of public assist (“we asked for help and they didn't give us, although we were about to get it and, at the last moment, we don't know why, it didn't arrive” ) since “my partner had problems in her office that affected us” [Sandra Ortega, la hija de los fundadores de Inditex poseía un 30% del capital de la hotelera, acusó a su gestor José Leyva de utilizar avales con su nombre para que Sarasola pudiese pedir préstamos]. “It was the perfect storm,” she concludes.

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