I am originally from Sweden and Johanna and I came to Mallorca to work for a hotel company in 1996. We had spent time in different places in Spain but really loved Mallorca and so in 1997 we bought the Portixol property and renovated it, opening it in 1999. We then bought and renovated the Esplendido Hotel in Port de Sóller, opening in 2005, nearly 20-years ago.  From there, we opened a hotel in Austria in 2011, the Sports Club in Palma in 2015, and the most recent project is Falcao One, the event boat, in 2017. In many ways, hospitality has been a part of my whole life. My parents ran a small hotel in the north of Sweden and we used to go there on holidays and I spent a lot of time around this environment since the age of 3, and I enjoyed it. I was going to study engineering but instead I studied finance for hospitality.

Yes, we loved Mallorca instantly. Johanna was working then with a big hotel chain that had lots of properties in Spain, but we fell in love with Mallorca and said, let’s do this ourselves. It was a good moment as well because it was around the time that the airline industry opened up, offering more flights with easier connections. We knew that we wanted to do direct to client booking and not book with tour operators, which had been the main approach on the island.

The Esplendido was already a hotel when we purchased it. In the 1950s, a French owner was going to build it into apartments, but after a visit to the Hotel Splendido in Portofino, Italy, he came back to Mallorca with the idea of establishing a hotel, changing all the architectural plans. It was opened in the mid-1950s and was a popular hotel for many years. When we bought it, it was still in operation but with the standards of the 1950s, so we made a full refit, taking out many rooms in order to make bigger rooms and with modern amenities and adding in a more contemporary style including the artwork.

Environment is super important in hospitality and I believe it is important to have good design. Also, we are in a business in which people move in and around it all the time and you need to have good quality.  We have worked with the same architect throughout and my business partner, Johanna, is in charge of the design. Timeless and classic, a mix of Scandinavian and Mediterranean.

I am very positive about tourism in Mallorca; it is very popular for all Europeans and elsewhere – but I think it is important that we work to preserve the environment of the island as well, so not to destroy it, but to take care of the resources that we have and support local businesses. All of our properties use local products first – food, wine, materials as much as possible. This is a priority for us.

I love to go have lunch or a coffee in Galilea, in the mountains. I love Sóller and the Port, but it’s a working place for me, so I go to Galilea. I love how quiet it is, the windy road to get there, it is a bit fresher and cooler in summer and the views over the sea are beautiful. It is a secret little place.