When BurgMaster Hospitality Consultants accepted this commitment, more than one team thought it was "mission impossible". As is known, the location is the cornerstone of the success of a hotel. So, what owner of a hotel located in prime urban area in Barcelona would give up his GOP in exchange for a rent? And if there was one, how to reach him? Would not it be wiser to identify a building or a plot and develop a project? No. Our client wanted a hotel in operation.
The objective of the client, a holiday hotel chain, was starting in the urban market and manage a first landmark hotel, a minimum of 4 stars and 80/120 rooms. The desired hotel should be a sign and symbol of the strategic shift of the hotel division of the group. To achieve this they decided to engage BurgMaster in order to identify a hotel of this type available for lease.
It was decided to take a census and examine all hotels of these characteristics in the area of the chosen city. Later, together with the customer, the preferred were selected. In total, 60. The next step was to identify the owners. The difficulties to accurately identify owners in the Land Registry are well known. In some cases, we had to perform personal visit to the hotel, and often had to overcome the distrust of employees. Finally, when we were about to give up we found an owner, senior, recently widowed and childless who was interested in studying the offer, culminating, after several months of difficult negotiations, with the signing of the lease.
