In the intricate and narrow halls of the Pachá Ibiza disco, an soundproofing room is hidden that the founder of the brand, the Catalan businessman Ricardo Urgell, used when he needed to organize meetings or hold meetings with his intimate. With a small bar bar, the wooden saloncito has leather sofas, low tables and another room for greater privacy. The music at full volume that clicks a click from the huge dance floor in which hundreds of people are barely heard in the soundproof room. There receives Aloki Batra, executive director of the Pachá Group after the Hotel Giant Dubaití Five Holdings, founded by the Indian businessman Kabir Mulchandani, was made in the summer of 2023 with the entire group of the two cherries after paying 302.5 million euros to the Trantic Capital Partners Investment Fund. The business conglomerate of Mulchandani closed the operation by buying the disco, the Destination Hotel Five Ibiza with its two restaurants, the Pachá Hotel and the restaurant of the same name that continue to operate under the umbrella of the Pachá Group. However, the businessman decided not to keep the restaurants Cabaré that are exploited under the Lío brand in Ibiza, Palma, Mikonos, London and with the small hotel they had launched in Formentera, assets that stayed in the hands of Trilantic. «We have exceeded all expectations in this first year,» Batra explains about these first months at the head of the address. According to data made by the company, in 2024 the group obtained 112 million euros in revenue, an increase of 7% compared to the 105 million euros of 2023 and the exploitation result (EBITDA) reached 37.4 million euros, experiencing an 8% increase. The little Payesa house that began to bring live music to Ibiza 52 years ago by the hand of Urgell, who wanted to take to the island the music business that eight years before had started to walk in Sitges, is now a capital part of the business of the Spanish nightlife. With a very improved health in the accounts, the Pachá Group has left the turbulence that hotel and leisure businesses suffered in the time of Trilantic Capital Partners, when they accumulated losses worth 118 million euros for six years of age with an expansive policy that led to extend the brand to other destinations of the world with doubtful result. The arrival of the pandemic, the confinement and the total closure of the leisure businesses for months was the final lunge and forced Trilantic to resort to a loan of the state of 18 million euros through the recapitalization fund of companies affected by the COVID-19. A loan that Five Holdings returned just a month after taking the group. Unlike the intentions of the investment fund, the new property ensures that it has a compromise with the long -term brand. «We are a private capital company and we have hospitality businesses, hotels, nightclubs and daytime, so our previous business is not very different. Although, without a doubt, Pachá is very special,» explains Batra. They decided to invest in the group thinking more about the brand than the place where it was implanted, although it recognizes that Spain is an “interesting” country for investments in this segment. «For us it was not something about Spain, it was about Pachá. What makes the difference is that it is the oldest disco in Europe, perhaps in the world; it is something unique in its class and you do not find opportunities like that very often,» he says.
Renew or die
The season has started strongly in Ibiza and with one of the crown jewels of the group completely renewed, after an important economic investment, to make a quality leap and focus on the client of high purchasing power. The Five Ibiza Hotel has passed in less than a year of being a four -star establishment to one of five stars great luxury after the renewal of its 159 rooms and suites, from the pool area in which the weekly parties are held with live music and the two restaurants, Elia and Cielo, which have been transformed to adapt to the demand of current travelers. Batra believes that it is an establishment located in one of the best areas of the island, overlooking the sea and the old area of the city, but that it remained stagnant for a decade as a four -star hotel to which a greater profitability could be taken with a comprehensive renewal. «We decided to spend the money needed to take it to the highest level, then we managed to qualify it as great luxury, so we are very proud.» This is the first hotel incursion of Five Holdings in Spain, which adds to the other three establishments, large luxury resorts, with which he counts in Dubai and the one that adds in Switzerland. It may not be the last incursion into the Spanish hotel, since Batra considers that the national market always offers «interesting» opportunities when attracting tourist investments. What is clear is that they will not venture in past companies and discard, for the moment, expand the brand in nightclubs beyond Ibiza, because it does not believe it is something that can be exported or franchise, not even in the emerging new tourist destinations of the Middle East where the demand of the clients is resembled in many aspects to that of Ibiza. For the executive director, the legacy of the “is strong” brand and that is why they have promoted a Beach Club, Pachá Beach, which opened a few months ago in Dubai, but that has nothing to do with the type of offer of the Ibizan disco. «We have tried to package Ibiza's style to offer it elsewhere in the world when the season on the island is not underway, but it is a diurnal and different concept,» he says. For Batra, Pachá's is not a brand philosophy, but rather «of culture» and that is why he believes that the essence and foundational spirit of the company promoted by Urgell, whom he does not know personally, still remains in certain aspects. «Pachá is about freedom, music, connection … are things that never change,» he says. And it is that the future is not written, but for the CEO of the group, as long as human emotions remain as love or the desire to meet others and have fun Pachá «will always be around.»
