One of the main hotel chains in Mallorca is Hipotels, a family firm that for decades has wanted to go unnoticed while building a business that today bills around 200 million euros and employs around 2,500 people a year.

“Unlike other competitors, we haven’t made too much noise and we’ve never been in a rush to grow. We have always thought carefully about each investment because all the hotels are owned by the property”, comments the vice-president Maria Antònia Llull, daughter of the founder, Joan Llull, who at 88 is still in charge of the management.

The family character has marked the history of the company, whose beginnings date back to 1973 on the beach of Cala Millor, in the east of the island. “The grandmother inherited some land on the coast, which at that time was the worst because the wealth was in the interior. However, the arrival of tourism on the island turned the situation around. My father, who at that time was dedicated to providing construction materials for other hotels, decided to venture with the construction of his own, taking advantage of the family land ”, he recalls.

Since then, the company has expanded throughout Cala Millor, where today it has 11 hotels, and also throughout the rest of the island, where it controls another nine tourist establishments, as well as a convention center.

“In 1992, we decided to make the leap to the Peninsula and bet on the beaches of Cádiz, which at that time were very little exploited,” recalls Gabriel Abraham, CEO of the company. On Barrosa beach, Hipotels built the Barrosa Palace, which has been renovated this year (as shown in the image below). On the same beach, the company has opened three more hotels, and has also expanded its presence in the province of Cádiz with two hotels in Conil and another in Jerez de la Frontera.

In addition to Mallorca and Cádiz, the company also has a presence on the island of Lanzarote (with two hotels) and in Mexico. “We always had our shin on the Caribbean and after many years struggling to get the license, finally, in 2018, we were able to open a five-star hotel in Cancun,” says Abraham, who adds that the company will open in the same area. a convention center and another hotel.

Llull explains that not all the establishments have been built by the company itself. Of the 28 stores he owns today, nine have been purchased from other competitors. “Our specialty is the sun and beach tourism offer and where we have seen opportunities we have bought”, he comments.

With three to five star hotels, the company has collaborated for decades with tour operators to attract their clientele. “We worked a lot with the German group TUI and we also did it with Thomas Cook, which went bankrupt in 2019.” If the disappearance of that British tour operator was already a hard blow for the sector, in the end it turned out that it was only the prelude to a 2020 to forget. “During the pandemic we lost a million euros every month because we had to cover the maintenance costs of the hotels,” they recall. Like the rest of the companies in the sector, Hipotels took advantage of ICO loans to face the slowdown of the health crisis and recovered as local and international tourism was restored.

“We have recovered the levels prior to the pandemic with a turnover of 200 million euros and an annual growth of 20%”, point out the managers, who ensure that last year the 2.7 million overnight stays will be exceeded. Regarding profitability, they indicate that gross profit (ebitda) will be around 30% per year.

“Despite the difficult years that we have had to face, Hipotels is a business that arouses a lot of interest in the market. Several investment funds have come looking for us with attractive purchase offers but we always say no, that the company is not for sale”, says Llull, who is committed to preserving the family character of the company.

The chain is convinced that its close treatment manages to captivate international clientele, mainly from Germany and the United Kingdom, and also from Spain. “We have achieved a repeat rate of 50% thanks to the effort we put into customer service, the location of the hotels and the gastronomic quality”, celebrates Llull.

With the same close treatment, the family wants to forge its relationship with the staff, made up of an average of 2,500 people. Given the shortage of personnel that affects the sector, the company has advanced the hiring for this summer season, thus ensuring that the best talent is at home.

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