According to a report from the Colliers real-estate services firm, investment in Balearic hotels in 2024 amounted to 553 million euros. Two-thirds of this came from international investment funds. There were 22 transactions, the largest of which was 200 million for the Six Senses Ibiza.
From 2019 to 2024, hotel investment in the Balearics totalled €3.5 billion. Of this, some €2 billion was from foreign investment funds. Colliers say that these funds have assumed a "dominant role", though there has been a recovery in domestic investment. This fell in 2020, but last year was back up to 186 million euros, 100 million of which was by hotel chains as opposed to investment funds.
Laura Hernando, managing director of hotels at Colliers, points out that the Balearics and the Canaries have increasingly become the "preferred option" for institutional investors as well as for leading Spanish hotel groups. The hotel sector in the Balearics is a "priority target".
One of the most active funds in recent years has been Blackstone, whose strategy - once an investment opportunity has been acquired - is to place the management in the hands of a specialised company. This company is in charge of day-to-day operations, while other specialised operators are brought in to manage service areas.
Aurelio Vázquez, who was the president of the Mallorca Hoteliers Federation when he was with Iberostar, is now the CEO of the Summum Hotel Group, having joined the Mallorcan chain at the end of 2024 after five years at Hotel Investment Partners (HIP), part of Blackstone.
"This is a business model that is now being developed in the Balearic Islands. It has primarily been brought here by investment funds. And it will continue to grow." Having different operators, he says, stems from "a desire to seek excellence and uniqueness" in each aspect of the hotel experience, e.g. catering or entertainment. "It's a system that gives you greater capacity to generate value, as opposed to the traditional model where everything was done by one operator."
Vázquez stresses that the investment process involves a great deal of research. At HIP, he worked with teams dedicated to the search for and evaluation of hotel assets in southern Europe. "Identifying investment opportunities is easy; identifying good ones is the hard part."
No comments
To be able to write a comment, you have to be registered and logged in
Currently there are no comments.