A scrapbook of ideas, lovingly updated over the years, finally gave Paul and Tania Slijper the hotel of their dreams on Mallorca
It’s no great surprise that Paul and Tania Slijper came up with a winner when they decided to open the Hotel L’Avenida in the Mallorcan town of Sóller. They knew the area well, having holidayed there for a number of years, and they had the necessary business acumen – Tania founded an advertising agency in London, which she later sold to Lord Bell.
But what really swung it was Paul’s scrapbook. “I’ve been involved with the tourism and hotel industry most of my working life,” says Paul, “firstly with an advertising agency specialising in travel then as marketing director of leading hotels and hotel groups.
“Even when I left the industry for a few years to set up a furniture shop, I held on to the idea I have always had: to own and run a hotel that brings together everything I ever learned about the leisure industry.”
Paul had been making mental notes of anything that caught his eye for the first years of his career. “But then I thought about a real scrapbook. I made notes, I kept hotel brochures, I collected tearsheets and cut out pictures from magazines – anything that appealed, any look that impressed me, any idea that caught my imagination.”
When the family and their three children moved from London to Haywards Heath in Sussex, Paul changed direction. He found a shop in Brighton’s famous Lanes and set up a business selling contemporary European furniture, ceramics and other decorative items.
“All the way through, though, I still had this idea of my own hotel. I had seen so many amazing properties and designs and such great service values that I felt I could use it all – with the help of my scrapbook – to create the hotel I really wanted.”
So in October 2005 – having extensively researched (and rejected) Britain and France – the Slijper family swapped their Sussex home for a new life in Mallorca.
It wasn’t the easiest of departures: two weeks before they left, the country property they had planned to buy to establish a rural tourism base failed a structural survey. So Paul and Tania, three pre-teen children and a cat were left with no home and no business.
Read the full article in our October 2008 edition.
Words by Anthony Jeffries.
