“For us OneShot Hotels is the project of our life. It is what we are, reflected in a business project.”
Discover the history of OneShot Hotels, a company that promotes art in its facilities and offers great amenities to its customers, by the hand of Luis Felipe Mendieta, Founding Partner and CEO of OneShot.
OneShot, by people who want to do
Mendieta always had an entrepreneurial mindset. He studied economics, completed a PhD thesis and began teaching at the University. Afterwards he began to work at a bank, like most of his peers. However, he quickly realized that this job was not for him.
The idea came to Mendieta at the time the tourism sector was becoming more professional in Spain. In Viajes el Corte Inglés he saw how the tourism sector was transforming and how technology was going to change the business model. He Malaga was the place to be, because there was potential there on a touristic point of view. Together with his partners, he decided to start a project in the hotel sector. They created their first chain of hotels, called IGH Hotels. The first hotel opened in Ronda, Malaga, from where the chain opened 7 other hotels in the area around Malaga.
IGH Hotels taught Mandieta and his partners the ins- and outs of the hotel sector. In 2009 they realized that the industry was transforming. With the increased competitive pressure from large sized competitors and the economic crisis, they learned that to be successful they had to differentiate their product and create a unique value proposition. They worked two years on the OneShot concept and marketing, while exhaustively analyzing the market. In 2010 they chose Madrid for their first OneShot Hotel.
A unique hotel concept
The first hotel was located on 23 Prado Street. Afterwards, they opened 2 more hotels in Madrid and expanded to Valencia, Sevilla and San Sebastian. Now, they are going to open a new hotel in Barcelona and they have the ambition to expand internationally as well. Currently, 200 employees work in the different hotels.
OneShot differentiates itself with their well-developed product and the location of their hotels. Also, they understand that their visitors appreciate architecture, design and space.
On top of that they do a project to support artists. Every 3 months they invite artists to display their photography in their hotels. OneShot refers to the shooting of the camera and the pictures were the inspiration of the name. OneShot helps artists through the financing their work and displaying them to a large public in their various hotels.
The values that drive OneShot are the best care and putting the greatest effort in everything they do.
Partners to grow
So far, OneShot’s expansion relied on small financing by banks, own resources and alternatives.
OneShot went from a turnover of €1,000,000 in 2013 to €15,000,000 in 2017. The turnover is said to grow to €20,000,000 in 2018. October, together with the lenders, help OneShot in their growth, due to the different way of looking at financing. Mendieta finds that the process of getting a loan at the bank was too long. He thought that his business was misunderstood, because of the barriers the bank created and the months it took to obtain just a small amount. The talks between the October risk team and the OneShot team were quick, transparent and clear and helped OneShot carry out their life project.
“For us, time is money and we appreciate that the lender also benefits from our loan.”
OneShot Hotels obtained a loan of €500,000 to finance the refurbishment of its new hotel in Barcelona within 10 days.
