Barcelona-based firm Meridia Capital has been explaining its approach to value creation across select asset classes even including “glamping” in its target markets of Spain and Portugal.
In an interview and site tour of one of its assets, the investment manager explained how it is emphasizing private equity-style value add investments via operational efficiencies especially in industries that have yet to be professionalised, such as glamping and micro-residential units for ‘nomad’ corporate workers. The company is also into hotels and service-led logistics.
Victor Iborra, real estate partner, explained that Meridia’s shift to a ‘hybrid model’ of operational real estate was motivated to an extent by the mature real estate investment market threatening its ability to meet requirements of value-add investing. Said Iborra: ‘Covid changed things towards end-users demanding a greater level of sophistication, meaning the owner needs to provide more services. This certainly applies to the hospitality market and also to residential. We can derive much more value through the operation of these assets.’ The first asset class Meridia moved into was the highly fragmented Spanish campsite market for which, unusually, it set up a special investment vehicle, Meridia Glamping Program.
The first asset class Meridia moved into was the highly fragmented Spanish campsite market for which, unusually, it set up a special investment vehicle, Meridia Glamping Program. Despite there being over 1,000 sites in Spain and around 300 in Portugal, no-one had pursued a strategy to aggregate sites, upgrade them into luxury glamping.
‘Most camp sites are for camper vans and caravans. Typically, they are old, unappealing and require upgrading and are owned by families,' said Iborra.
In response, Meridia has created an operational company under one brand, Wecamp, and is busy building the company with a good management team, a fully transactional online portal for visitors to book their camping experience, facility management services, and software providing rich data on everything from daily occupational levels per site, demographic breakdowns such as nationality of its customers, and optimal pricing strategy at any given point in time.
So far, Meridia has acquired 12 glamping sites in Andalusia, Aragon, Asturias, Catalonia, and the Basque country in a sector where hitherto no-one owned more than five. This already makes Meridia Spain’s largest owner and operator of camp sites. It has also just expanded into Portugal with a debut deal in May.
The company is currently on the fundraising trail for Fund V, which has a focus on hospitality, living, and logistics and is understood to have raised commitments of around €250 mln so far ing towards a €400 mln target.
Subscribers can read the interview in the latest edition of the magazine and via a PDF linked below.
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