The mythical cabaret restaurant and discotheque Lío Ibiza will have to move next year. According to La Voz de Ibiza, Marina Ibiza has informed Trilantic that the lease contract , which expires at the end of 2025 , will not be renewed .
Both Marina Ibiza and Lío Ibiza have declined to give further details of the end of the contractual relationship they have maintained since the disruptive concept created by Ricardo Urgell was installed in what was formerly El Divino. The end of the relationship comes as no surprise. Marina Ibiza’s resistance to renew the contract and its desire to get involved in the business, as it does with other entertainment venues located in the luxury sports dock, fueled the hypothesis. So much so that in recent times there have been numerous groups that have sounded out the possibility of being the new tenants of the coveted space. Moreover, according to La Voz de Ibiza, the management of Lío Ibiza had given up the option of continuing in the location and, despite having no official communication, had begun an intense search to find a new location months ago in view of the fact that the renewal of the rental contract had not materialized. In an interview with La Voz de Ibiza, Marcos Marí, CEO of Insotel Marine Group, a division of Grupo de Empresas Alonso Marí SA that owns several concessions in the port of Vila, including Marina Ibiza, had advanced this possibility in February last year . “Trilantic (the investment fund that bought Pacha) has a contract with us until the end of 2025. What I can tell you is that we are not ruling anything out. In fact, we are in talks with Trilanticwho have expressed their willingness to renew. Obviously, we have had many approaches from different groups, but for us 2025 is a long term and we are not in a hurry. Our idea is to make a decision by the end of 2024. We have the Marina Ibiza concession until 2032,” he explained.
Many brides for the Lío
In the interview with La Voz de Ibiza, Marcos Marí ruled out managing the premises of the Lío directly, but not participating in its management by the hand of a partner. ” We directly and alone, I can assure you categorically that no. We have had invitations to associate or participate in some way in the management of the premises. We have had invitations to associate or participate in some way in the business from different groups. We are very much a ” cobbler to your shoes” and we do not have a know-how in high-level restoration, so we always go hand in hand with people who know much more than us and we accompany them, “he explained.
Barefoot Living
One of the possibilities that is gaining strength points to Grupo Vivir Descalzo, who are already partners of the Marí family in several businesses. The businessmen Miguel Sancho and Andrés García-Prado are the representatives of Grupo Vivir Descalzo, the company that manages Roto and Filin, in Marina Ibiza and in partnership with the concessionaire, Playa Soleil, in Playa den Bossa, in partnership with the Marí family and Ushuaïa Entertainement. Last summer it returned to its origins by opening Cala Duo in Formentera. It also opened Marina Village, a complex located on the golden mile, just a few meters from Marina Ibiza. There have also been contacts with Empresas Matutes which, to date, have not come to fruition.
Months of negotiations
Months of negotiations are coming for both Marina Ibiza and Lío Ibiza. The former have to select the future tenant with the challenge of ensuring that the leisure and restaurant offer of Marina Ibiza does not lose value with the departure of the emblematic cabaret restaurant and nightclub. “We have learned in Marina Ibiza that the management of a marina can be compared to the management of a hotel to the extent that in a hotel you rent a space for someone who knows more than you to manage a sports facility, a spa or a restaurant and in the end the client does not know who is behind each service, but their experience depends on all the actors, which impacts the hotel brand. At Marina Ibiza, the customer does not know who manages the Lío, the Cappuccino or the stores, but everything influences their perception. That is why we have learned that it is essential to have links with the businesses under the same umbrella to guarantee the quality of the service. This was the reason why we started to enter into some activities. And for this reason we are analyzing the interesting proposals made to us by very reputable and credible people to decide if we do any activity in those premises,” Marcos Marí explained last year in the aforementioned interview in La Voz de Ibiza.
The future of Lío Ibiza
For its part, Lío Ibiza must find a location in line with its level of service that will allow it to offer a dinner show to more than 400 diners every night. All this while a sale offer satisfactory to the interests of the investment fund that bought the Pacha Group is being finalized. Since then, Trilantic has sold the nightclub and the hotels linked to the mythical cherries and Casa Formentera, which was bought by two former executives of the two cherries group. It maintains the Lío brand in its portfolio, with fixed premises in Ibiza, Mallorca, Mykonos and London. The project to open in Dubai by the buyers of Pacha, Five Holdings, finally did not go ahead.
He recently completed his Christmas foray at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas.
And his vocation is to end up selling Lío as well.
