Failure has a reward. So it is in the case of Kike Sarasola. The founder of the “cute” Room Mate hotels returns to the chain as president with the blessing of the new owners of the business, the American fund Angelo Gordon and the Canadian hotel manager Westmont Hospitality. The relaunch and expansion project will be carried out through the purchase of hotels, chains and new openings, but with the intention of making them “luxury”.
The businessman miraculously recovers the address of a company that he lost due to the action of one of his investment partners, Sandra Ortegathe eldest daughter of Amancio Ortega, founder of Inditex. Sandra put her 31% of Room Mate shares up for sale, after the conflict she had against her former manager, Jose Leyteagainst whom he sued for misappropriation, document falsification and unfair administration for a matter related to the Sarasola hotel company.
read also: Amancio Ortega’s eldest daughter evicts Ayuso’s landlord, Kike Sarasola
Who was the “landlord” of the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Diaz Ayusoduring the worst of the pandemic, he will be able to continue running the company, which in this second opportunity starts with 22 hotels and 11 tourist apartment buildings in six countries, mainly in Spain, Italy and the Netherlands.
The chain is joined by a recently opened hostel in Istanbul with 190 beds, called WabiSabi (ie; the beauty of the imperfect in Japanese), which is doing so well that it already has 90% occupancy. The business plan includes the possibility of expanding throughout Europe, including the main Spanish cities, such as Valencia, Malaga or Seville, and getting into the luxury market with five-star hotels, as stated The Spanish.
According to the businessman’s statements, “2022 has been a great year and it will be similar to 2019”, when they billed 107 million, although they never recorded benefits: “The road to get here has been very hard. It almost took me ahead and It almost ruined me. As the owner, I lost Room Mate, but the partner arrived and now I’m very happy,” he confessed.
Although the new owners have maintained the Room Mate team and staff, in order to make the chain profitable, six hotels have been dispensed with; the ones he had in Miami and New York, which were the ones with which Sandra Ortega started an eviction process by demanding payment of 100% of the rental income for those hotels, and those in Malaga and Barcelona, with which they also failed to renegotiate the rental contracts.