Marc Rahola Matutes(Barcelona, 1974) started as a telephone operator in a hotel of the former Fiesta hotel chain founded by his uncle, Abel Matutes Juanwhich over the years became Palladium Hotel Group “when I was 16 or 17 years old and I was the typical kid who got something in the summer”. With an Ibizan mother and Catalan father, he later studied for a degree in Business Management and Administration at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
Connected to customers and their families, he began his love affair with the hospitality industry. Without knowing it and without realizing it. At that age, what interested him was music “and having a good time, I wasn’t interested in the hotel business”.
He sold CDs: Space, Café del Mar and one of a certain Hôtel Costes. It wasn’t until he finished his university career that he was able to satisfy his curiosity to know that place on Rue Saint-Honoré, in Paris.
“When I saw it, it was love at first sight. It was a boutique hotel from the late 19th century, with a lot of red, a lot of velvet, very Moulin Rouge. It was a place to be, half of Paris was there for any kind of meeting and it hosted artistic events, musical events… they had a DJ in the middle of the hotel, we are talking about the ’80s, ’90s. It’s iconoclastic,” he says.
He adds: “I fell in love. I saw this urban piece that offered more than just rooms to clients. It was the kind of tourism I wanted to do. It was inspiring.
Thus, from love with the , Marc Rahola goes from a young telephone operator in the family business that provides him with an affluent life dreaming of music, to opening up and becoming founder and CEO of the successful OD Group (Ocean Drive, Ryans Hotels, Concept Hotel Group and more).
-Didn’t you consider whether this hotel idea you were handling was a line you could propose at Palladium Hotel Group before making the leap?
-I didn’t even think about it. I was very happy there, I have several friends from that time. But I needed to answer a question: whether I knew how to do something on my own, or not. It was a vital question that had to do with myself: do I know how to do something or was I born into a family that had already done everything? Circumstances combined: those questions, discovering the hotel business in a different way… you think about being able to express yourself in some way.
-With the Ocean Drive in Marina Botafoch did you already envision a chain?
-No, I only thought of expressing what I had inside, I did not imagine a chain. We took a hotel that was small and especially for the time, when it was said that a hotel had to have at least 150 rooms to be profitable. It was also said that it had to be close to the beach, and Talamanca is in the back and was not highly valued at that time. It also does not have a swimming pool.
-Is that why Palladium Hotel Group didn’t want to exploit it?
-Neither Palladium nor many others, including its owner, who sold it to us. I took a risk: I bet on opening all year round. It worked and we kept incorporating elements until we reached what today nobody doubts what it is, the concept of a boutique hotel. It was 2005, at that time there was not even the Ibiza Gran Hotel, it was a casino. The big hotels were 4-star hotels, there were no 5-star hotels. Moreover, I estimate that 80% of the hotels at that time did not have air conditioning. We were pioneers in that concept in Spain: there were only a handful of boutique hotels in Palma, Barcelona, Madrid. It was a more international process: from London, New York, Paris, the places I visited for inspiration, which I still visit today.
-How much of that Parisian hotel that you fell in love with is currently in your hotels?
-I’m not a copier. But it was very inspiring. There are many elements in our hotels that you obviously take from concepts that you like, that you see operationally how to apply. My hotel was in Ibiza, it didn’t have 100 rooms, it didn’t have those prices, in fact Ibiza was light years away from those prices. It was a suggestion of a model and it was to see how to implement it.
OD Group, Concept Hotel Group and Palladium
-Is there a conflict of interest in sitting on the Board of Directors of your investee, Palladium Hotel Group?
-Palladium is not an investee. I am a historical partner, my uncle Abel (Matutes Juan) took part of the family heritage and developed it, which led to my mother having a stake in the company. I spent part of my career there and today I am a director and will continue to be a director. The company is doing very well, everything works fantastic and the relationship is unbeatable. When things are discussed, conflicts are avoided. And things are discussed in private, not in public.
-As if you didn’t have enough with OD Group, Ryans and Palladium, Concept Hotel Group.
-Concept Hotel Group is not an investee either, it is a purchase. We see it as part of the OD Group ecosystem, a brand within a structure in which there is an investment platform and a management platform, a financial, administrative, IT, reporting, investment and modeling model.
By implementing this model, we have been able to carry out projects such as Mongibello or Los Felices. We were in smaller hotels and now we have been able to move to large format. Mongibello has 168 rooms and is owned by an investment fund.
Without professionalization work, it is difficult to compete. The same happens with Los Felices, a project of the Ocean Group Capital fund. It is within this scheme. What happens is that there is a part that is the front-office that we want to promote with a figure who is the father of the product, who watches over it, who is my partner and friend Diego (Calvo). We should not think of it in terms of black and white: it is gray.
We are in a moment as I said, with an unbeatable relationship, we are living a moment like all relationships, very romantic, very good, and at the same time we are in crisis, in a remodeling crisis. It is like the shell of a lobster: as they grow, they have to mutate. That is to say: as you grow, the shell you had before is no longer valid.
The 2024 season, full of satisfactions for OD Group
-From 1 to 10, how do you evaluate the 2024 season?
-It went well. I give it a 9. Better than last year in all the hotels. In some, under budget, but still better than last year.
-You have received, in the Nit del Turisme 2024, the award for tourism innovation, modernization and innovation of the hotel offer of Ibiza with a new concept of accommodation that promotes artistic creation as a differentiator, inclusive buildings and an inclusive design that is committed to sustainability and helps the recovery of degraded environments and revalues disused buildings. What did this recognition bring you?
-I am very happy and what you say is true. I have taken many hotels here that were closed. The Ryans Lolas and Los Felices were closed. Some of the proposals we have made have been proposals to generate value. When we took the OD Port Portals (Mallorca) it was an abandoned hotel after a fire.
We look for processes that have a second life, a second chapter with inclusive processes. Inclusive means that all the spaces are designed for the neighbor to enter, such as the Ryans with the 666 hamburger restaurant whose 50% of the production is made by people from Ibiza, with prices for the people of Ibiza.
All this allows artistic performances of all kinds, and to promote and make a platform for very local artistic proposals. With that we have made our OD Art Awards. Our own magazine, Ibiza Art Guide and Fiesta Bullshit Magazine. We have managed to get Ibiza Art Guide to be present in Urbanity. We are trying to get it also in Arco, but it is already in CAN (Contemporary Art Now). We have helped people from Urbanity, who were doing the Contemporary Art fair in Madrid, to come here and do CAN.
All the hotels are designed to generate that life again, to generate things. And then Ibiza Art Guide takes care of Ibizan artists or artists based in Ibiza, who are Ibicencos at heart. We do this whole process from the hotels. Hotels have that possibility to generate a positive impact. I am one of those who want to do it. It is enough to see the spaces of our hotels: there are no walls, everything is open, it invites you to be there. It’s not sectioned off, it’s not like you can’t go in and if you go somewhere they’re going to tell you something. They are open, it is an open living room. All this generates this proposal, they are not exclusive. The idea is: “Come, generate wealth in the space for yourself”.
With that we participate in a multitude of proposals. This implies the design of the spaces, suitable for all kinds of exhibitions, it implies that the materials we use have a low impact in terms of sustainability, that we have recycling systems and elements in line with this value proposition. That is the basis of what is happening. It’s something we’ve been doing forever, since I started with Ocean Drive. That’s what made me fall in love with the Hotel Costes, I liked that people from Paris went to a hotel. And not only that, but in the end it comes to you in Ibiza through selling a CD of something that is in Paris. This in the early 90’s was a shock. There was no Internet, or it existed for four people. That’s the kind of tourism I believe in for me. I’m not saying that all the others are not valid. A destination is made up of hotels of all kinds and that is valid and necessary, from the 5-star to the hostel. All that confers an interest in a destination. I am simply one more link in the tourist chain.