Yann Pissenem, the genius who captivates 1.5 million customers a year in his Ibiza lounges: “VIPs allow me to finance the shows and allow those who are on the dance floor to come”.

Yann Pissenem, creator of Ushuaïa, Hï Ibiza and the recently announced hyperclub [UNVRS] (Universe, where Privilege used to be) leads a spartan life with the martial discipline that characterizes elite athletes, which in his case is also high performance, far from the extravagances one would imagine from one of the most powerful names in Ibiza’s leisure industry, which means the world. There are luxuries, yes, but also a strict routine highly focused on the goal of success.

One of the key reasons why Pissenem is behind no less than the best club in the world and the third best in The World’s 100 Best Clubs is that he sleeps little during the summer season. To his undoubted talent and creativity he adds an admirable capacity for work, both in intensity and quantity.

It is therefore no coincidence that it has 1.5 million visitors per season in its Ibiza premises, more than a thousand employees and an annual turnover of 200 million euros.

These last two facts and the surprising nuances of his philosophy of life have been revealed in detail in El Mundo, in an interview by Ricardo F. Colmenero, a Galician journalist who has lived in Ibiza for more than decades.

It is the perfect opportunity to get to know something about someone who is not very much in the media. He has little time.

Yann Pissenem: from a youth of collecting glasses to successful creator of Ushuaïa and Hï Ibiza

Long before becoming father of Ushaïa and Hï Ibiza, Yann Pissenem was born and raised in Azelot . This village in northeastern France is one of wonderful landscapes but harsh winter and 400 inhabitants. In the middle of the snow, as a child he woke up at 5 o’clock and took two buses to go to school. He also studied piano, played rugby, became a black belt in judo and learned English, Spanish and German.

He studied law, left and then studied tourism in Barcelona. There, in the early ’90s, he fell in love with the nightlife. And yet, already at that time, he led a healthy life, without drugs or alcohol.

When he needed money to keep spending it on parties and shows, he didn’t hesitate to work at whatever was necessary. Although he looked for work as a waiter, from bar to bar, he only found work as a glass collector and cleaning toilets.

“I think that society is encouraging passivity, not working, and it even seems to be well regarded, and it is very sad,” reflects this 50-year-old passionate and tireless man, who is tireless in what he does, in a conversation with El Mundo.

From collecting glasses, he became the manager of the premises and then a partner. He bought the other part, sold and bought a bigger place. At that time he offered one of his first jobs to a fellow countryman who was starting out in the world of deejing: David Guetta, one of the most famous djs in the world, if not the most famous, and who plays throughout the season on Fridays at Hï Ibiza and Mondays at Usuhaïa. It is a house rule that the guru of Ibiza’s entertainment is waiting for you at the entrance of the club.

But that success didn’t stop him, on the contrary. He knew how to anticipate changes: “The place where I lived and had my business was quite unstable. Everyone was going way beyond their means and it didn’t look good”.

He lived austerely: “I didn’t earn much because I tried to make the business grow by reinvesting in it (…) I have never been one for luxuries either. Looking at my partners’ cars, I had a red Polo that I parked at the end of the parking lot, and then I would walk over so no one would see it. But my waiters also worked on the construction site, and they had beautiful Mercedes and BMWs”.

Ibiza, Pissenem’s promised land

As a child he dreamed of living on an island and that dream crystallized when he bought a bar in Platja d’en Bossa which he turned into the island’s first beach club.

“At that time Ibiza’s nightclubs were a big box, with a lot of young people, mostly from the UK (…) there was a very big market to cover,” he tells El Mundo.

The market in which he was thinking, the particular window of opportunity that every entrepreneur sees where others see nothing, was that of“a more adult public, who have studied, who have a more interesting social, labor and economic position”.

“That he can no longer live certain things because he doesn’t want to wait until five in the morning to see his favorite DJ in a disco full of sweaty kids. That he wants to dance a little, have dinner and the next day catch a boat, and that he’s going to boost the island’s economy in another way,” he details.

The perfect marriage with the Matutes

Although everyone told him it wasn’t going to work, of course, it worked and well. Very well. Ushuaïa was born and although it closed and lived for months in the closed premises, eating yogurts that were discarded in supermarkets, it later reopened in front of one of the Matutes’ family hotels, who were “alert” to their Ushuaïa and are defined by the king of Ibiza’s dance floors as “very smart for business”.

Eventually, the club moved to one of those hotels, with the balconies of the rooms as bleachers facing the stage. It was a revolution.

The Matutes family had been linked to the world of leisure for decades, when Abel Matutes Juan thought it was a good idea to build a nightclub in Playa den Bossa to entertain the young people staying in the many hotels that the then Fiesta Hotels had in the area. Thus was born Space, now Hï Ibiza. Subsequently, Suministros Ibiza, one of the companies owned by Empresas Matutes, took a very important share of Privilege as payment of debts for the supply of construction material. Years later, the group kept 100% of the property. The Matutes-Pissenem or Pissenem-Matutes binomial created a company that exploits the parties held at the Usuhaïa hotel and Hï Ibiza, assets owned by Empresas Matutes. The same move has been replicated at [UNVRS]. The stormy and, seen with the current perspective even poetic, beginnings in which the Matutes were the landlords of the Pissenem that congregated to its beach club to 3,000 people summoned to dance in Playa den Bossa are far away. “Their clients went out to the beach and I was there, with Luciano playing in front of 3,000 thousand people. Let’s say they were somewhat antagonistic businesses,” he recalls.

The Robin Hood of dance floors

“With what I generate in income on the dance floor, I can’t pay the artists’ fees or those brutal productions on stage. I have to finance all this from somewhere. It’s not that I’m Robin Hood, but I take money from the tables of those people who have more purchasing power so that everyone can enjoy the same show. You see exactly the same thing from the VIP as you do in the middle of the arena,” Pissenem explains.

After that, in 2017 came Hï. And is promised by 2025 as the world’s first hyperclub where Privilege was before and first the legendary Ku.

Don’t go away yet because behind the prolific creative factory of this incombustible genius there is still more. Playa Soleil in Playa den Bossa and the parties ANTS, Palmarama and the wink to the local public in the Hard Rock hotels of Ibiza and Tenerife of Palladium Hotel Group with Children’s of the 80s, also enjoyed by the Mallorcan public.

This is how one of the world’s most successful men lives today.

“I open Ushuaïa at 4 pm, do the whole afternoon, then all night at Hï until 7 am, go to bed at 8 am, get up at 11.30 am at the latest, go to do my mails for an hour and a half, then train from 1 to 2.30 pm, come to Hï again and stay in the office all afternoon until Ushuaïa reopens,” details the entrepreneur about his summer routine. That’s for 150 days in a row. On Sunday he will put an end to his Ibizan maelstrom.

Why has several answers. In part, he knows that he moves in a highly competitive world and that something that slips his expert eye can cost millions. Partly, he thinks, “I don’t know if it’s because I’ve come from so little, that I’ve always been afraid of losing what I’ve achieved.”

On the other hand, he admits: “I don’t know how to delegate, I like to control”. The article details that not even his communication team knew what he was planning with the drones to simulate a UFO over Es Vedrà. The appearance of the alleged UFO was spontaneously viralized to promote UNVRS and the campaign included none other than Will Smith.

So, Pissenem sleeps less than four hours and lives “like an elite athlete”. He doesn’t go to restaurants and has a carefully planned diet that includes high-tech supplements created by a Swiss laboratory. He sleeps in a hyperbaric chamber that delivers oxygen to all the tissues of his demanding body and trains his physique and mind with jiujitsu.

And if Yann Pissenem, between Ushuaïa and Hï Ibiza, picks up the great DJs at the doors of their temples, it is not because he controls everything, but because he likes it. Because he enjoys what he does: “I like the music and the people”.

“I’m not a doctor or anything, but for five, six or eight hours I have thousands of people dancing with a smile,” Pissenem says. He waits until winter to slow down a bit and devote himself to family life. One with his wife and daughters in the countryside that reminds him of where he grew up, but on his beloved island.

In any case, this year less than others because his entertainment empire is moving to Dubai where Usuhaïa will offer an electronic music festival session once a week.