El Corte Inglés and Palladium part ways. The group chaired by Marta Álvarez has formalised its exit from the Only You hotels, a chain in which it had a 50% stake with the Matutes family.
According to information published by the ABC newspaper based on the 2022 annual report published by El Cortés Inglés, the company has sold its stake to the Matutes family. The transaction was completed on 28 July last year, although its exit from the board was not formalised until October, leaving Palladium as the sole shareholder of the hotel.
Palladium states that its intention is to “continue with the growth and internationalisation of the brand that it already managed and will continue to manage”. It currently owns five establishments in Spain, two in Madrid, one in Malaga, one in Valencia and one in Seville – scheduled to open in 2024.
This decision is part of the strategic shift driven by El Corte Inglés in its hotel business. At the beginning of 2022, it already closed the sale of five of the six hotels operating under the Ayre Hoteles brand to the French group Eurazeo with Palladium. Together, the assets totalled 800 rooms in a transaction after which the group considered the possibility of operating alone.
In line with this strategic plan, the company is focused on finding an operator for the future establishment that will open in the highly sought-after Calle Goya, in the heart of Madrid’s Salamanca district. A year ago, it received the go-ahead for its special plan to transform two residential buildings located on Calle Goya 89 and Calle Conde de Peñalver 3 into a new hotel of just over 1,200 square metres and a hundred rooms right next to one of its main shopping centres.
The company is working with an independent expert to approach hotel and commercial operators to obtain the best solutions for the management of the project. The expert in question is Colliers, which in May already received the first proposals with business plans that comfortably exceeded the sales of 4.77 million euros expected during the first year of activity of the future establishment.
