On September 4, hotelier Jaume Serra Canela died in Barcelona. A fundamental businessman to understand the transformation of the hospitality industry and an unrepeatable personality to lead it towards a cosmopolitan modernity that we have not been able to recognize in time as it would have deserved.
After Jaume, the word hotelier is dimensioned. He made this innovative impulse inseparable from his personality. For this reason, it is easy for all of us who were lucky enough to know him to see behind the word hotelier all those other qualities that defined him: patron, visionary, music lover, reader, traveler, philanthropist, pianist, polyglot, bon vivant he was, precisely, who knew how to bring them together throughout his career in his great passion: hotels, or as he liked to say, the theater of dreams.
And that was his great stimulus, imagining the hotels as he would have wanted to experience them, surprising, fun, excellent. And to do it, to work to get them going, it had to be a surprising, fun and excellent collective adventure.
Jaume was always ahead of schedule. Already at the age of 17 and gifted with incredible language skills and driven by a curiosity that never left him, he trained in airlines such as KLM, Swiss Air, Lufthansa or Air Canada, which opened the doors to a world, that we didn't even expect it here. These are the years of great trips organized in New York, Havana, Manila, Rio de Janeiro... Contact with groups of artists, architects and designers. To take them to a Woody Allen concert. These are the years of gaining confidence in dealing with large international chains, of deploying their skills for socialization and, above all, of discovering shortcomings, such as that travel agencies did not charge for their mediation, and opportunities, when here everything was to be done.
This unstoppable inertia led him to become independent and open his own travel agency, Vía Sònic, where he caused a paradigm shift within the local scene, starting by commissioning the then young promises Claret Serrahima, the image and Josep Lluis Mateo, the design of the premises. A declaration of principles that has accompanied him in all his adventures.
When Antonio Catalán called him to transform the Calderón hotel and allowed him to make a change of scale, Jaume was already a reference. It is the time when he is accompanied by Antonio Cintas and Rocío Clarimon to consummate the dream-team of the Catalan hospitality industry. And Jaume had a gift for choosing, forming and taking care of the team, with the skill and generosity of someone who will take a long trip.
The theater of dreams begins. The best restaurateurs enter the kitchen and the first breakfast buffet in Spain opens. A new entertainment idea unfolds. A hotel became the epicenter of Barcelona's nightlife, as in big cities. Even Quim Monzó went so far as to say that nowhere, like in the Calderón toilets.
In a single year, occupancy went from 38% to 92%. These are the times when NHs are forged. The decisive commitment to a hotel converted into an extension of the house, comfortable, urban. One formula in management and treatment for resounding success. La Cubana will liven up all the openings of the NH stands at Fitur with its performances, with the inauguration of the ham corner with all the pomp and enjoyment of those present.
Driven to continue starting, Jaume seduces one of the great names of the national hospitality industry: Gabriel Escarré, who does not hesitate to leave the Sarrià hotel in the hands of Jaume and his team, which changed its name, but above all its project, until consolidating itself as the benchmark of the urban hotel par excellence. The boutique hotel is born. Modern techniques in gastronomy and entertainment are perfected. The first brunch is offered. The decoration of the lobby is entrusted to MBM and Perico Pastor becomes part of the interior cultural landscape. Well, and outside, because after the unfortunate fire and the mythical scene of the great Sara Montiel who, some time later, still thanked him for sending her the best mattress in the world, he painted the protective fences of the building while it was being repaired.
These are the times of initiatives as surprising as sending breakfasts to radio talk shows and exchanges with other hotels in other cities. These are the times when characters like Antoni Miralda, Montse Guillen or Javier Mariscal become part of the big family.
Create Clavel Hoteles, who participates in the start-up, with baptism included, of the Olympic Plaza with the help of the promoter Enric Reyna. Adventure that he ends up consolidating and finally running Sants. Definitive field of operations for the catapult that was the partnership with the Barceló, the last of the great lineages that surrendered to their magic and with which they deployed an expansion and contagion, which began in Bilbao, a minute before Gehry. There the all-star hotel was invented, crowned by panoramic suites over the estuary that redraw the new façade with all the gradation until dismantling the lobby to let in the walk and bicycles!
In 2007, once again ahead of his time, and once again eager to start, he embarked on the purchase of old shabby guesthouses in Ciutat Vella, to conceive, now with his two children Bibiana and Àlex, a new urban recipe for hostels: affordable, comfortable, and as he never failed to claim, hooligans. The Cats are born and, with them, a feline philosophy, a stealthy, independent, cunning way of being in the city. A company that soon opened to Europe and continues to grow in a format that includes all of its legacies.
It is almost impossible to encompass in a single writing his career, the list of initiatives he launched, his excessive and singular life, the multiple personalities that surrounded him. He left me the bar 33 and Dani Freixas, he left me Rosa Grau and the meat of her, Gaig or Comadria, and above all the hundreds of collaborators who miss him today. But we cannot close this brief tour of an almost literary life without making a note about the Al Qántara Foundation that he launched in Morocco. A training school in hospitality, where he started an incentive that was as necessary as it was pioneering, where he also hid his esteem and admiration for a culture that fascinated him.
As Antonio Cintas reminded us on the day of his farewell, there are those who told him: Jaume, when you die, it is impossible for you to pass on to a better life. Because you have known how to live it like no one else, and we affirm, and you have known how to give it to all those who have surrounded you, like no one else. Good check-out, rock star!
