Business type
Luxury boutique hotel
Location
Barcelona
Areas of work
Revenue · Positioning · Distribution · BI
Collaboration period
2022–2024
Size
6 suites
Six suites in a 1906 modernista building on Passeig de Gràcia. It had everything it needed to be exceptional, except the results.
ABAL Stories
El Palauet Royal Suites: the luxury of the great «desconegut».
The story of this project, told by those who lived it. With Raúl Muñoz, general manager of El Palauet.
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The starting point
The property was open, but its results were negative.
El Palauet is a 1906 modernista building on Passeig de Gràcia with just six suites and an extraordinary accommodation offering. It had architecture, history, spectacular suites and a prime location. But it had not yet managed to turn that value into financial results.
Its international recognition as a place to stay was limited, and the market didn't quite understand what made the product different. At the same time, a strategy focused on keeping rates very high made it hard to achieve sufficient occupancy. To compensate, it relied on long stays that brought volume but considerably reduced the average rate.
With only six suites, the margin for error was minimal. Every unsold night had a direct impact on the bottom line.
What we saw
Understanding who El Palauet was really competing against.
One of the first decisions was to understand who El Palauet was really competing against. That shaped both its positioning and the price the market was willing to pay.
The challenge was to understand what made the product extraordinary, find its place in the market and make sure that value reached the right guest. Its history, its architecture and its uniqueness were not being conveyed to the market as part of the property's value. Positioning, communication, distribution and revenue had to pull in the same direction.
The decisions
Stop protecting a rate the market didn't support.
ABAL developed a far more dynamic revenue strategy, adapting prices, availability and conditions to how demand and occupancy were actually evolving. One of the most important decisions was to stop protecting a high rate when the market didn't support it. The goal wasn't to achieve the highest price. It was to achieve the best possible result from six suites.
The building's history, architecture and uniqueness took centre stage in the communication, supported by a new website, professional photography and audiovisual content that represented the product far better.
The new strategy involved a decision that might seem counterintuitive: accepting a lower average rate to significantly increase the asset's capacity to generate revenue. A more dynamic pricing policy captured demand that was previously being lost, stabilised occupancy and raised the overall performance of the six suites.
The transformation also meant investing in marketing, communication and the direct channel. Using the Business Intelligence technology developed by ABAL, we analysed demand behaviour and direct channel performance to understand which investment was generating business.
The result
+60%
Revenue. First year working with ABAL versus the previous comparable period.
With the same six suites, the new strategy stabilised occupancy and significantly increased revenue, without expanding the property's capacity. Growth came from repositioning, distributing and selling the existing product better, and using revenue to optimise the result, not to defend a rate.
Making uniqueness profitable
Having an exceptional asset is only the starting point.
To turn it into a good business as well, you need to understand what place it really holds in the market, who is willing to buy it, how to reach that guest and which combination of price and occupancy delivers the best result. At El Palauet, ABAL worked on precisely that connection between product, positioning, revenue, distribution, marketing, technology and financial results.
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