Richard Branson (London, 72 years old) is one of the best-known businessmen on the planet. He has been making juicy headlines for decades due to his commercial or personal adventures. Even for the combination of both, as when he flew to the ends of the atmosphere with his own aerospace company, ahead of characters like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. The British tycoon won the race of billionaires to reach space despite the fact that his fortune, valued at about 3,000 million dollars by Forbes, is light years ahead of that of his competitors.
No one can doubt that the Briton knows how to compete. He also received media attention, and that is why his apparent shyness disappears when he does not hesitate to get into a fountain to immortalize his arrival at Son Bunyola, the new luxury hotel that he has just inaugurated in Majorca. Or getting on a chair to welcome guests to the opening party, to which the company invites various media. The next morning, he attends EL PAÍS to talk about tourism, a sector to which most of his companies belong and to which he sees both future and challenges ahead. “In 50 years I think people will still be looking for wilderness,” he says, “and as the world will unfortunately be more built up, the big challenge is to make sure it’s similar to what it is now.”
The seed of Branson’s business was the Virgin Records record company, which he founded in 1972 and sold in the early 1990s. But the brand that gives its name to a group with diverse businesses remained, from gyms to telephony, in which those linked to tourism stand out. Among others, two airlines, a cruise company and several hotels. The consolidated results of the group in 2021, the last ones that it has made public on its website, reflect an income of 116 million pounds —almost 136 million euros, at the current exchange rate— of which 16.3 million came from the hotel part. The final consolidated result showed losses of 10.5 million euros. “The Virgin Group is a global company,” says its founder. “We describe a circle around the world and try to address some of the big problems,” he adds, emphasizing his relationship with historical figures such as Kofi Annan or Nelson Mandela.
Branson has never been a discreet businessman. His public image is closer to that of a musical star or political personality, a terrain that he does not shy away from. Since the start of the Ukrainian war he has met President Volodymyr Zelensky twice. And the opposite opinion of him on Brexit is known. Do you think that the departure of the United Kingdom from the EU harms businesses like the one that has just opened in Mallorca? “There is not a single Englishman working here, which is sad,” he replies bluntly. And yet he develops the answer to make it clear that in his opinion on this matter there is no room for half measures: “Brexit has had very few benefits, if any, because I do not see any. And hopefully one day common sense will prevail again and someone will ask us if we want to unite with Europe again”, says who since 2000 has had the sir in front of his name because he was knighted by the then Prince of Wales and current King Charles III.
Regarding his interests in Spain, Branson cites the Virgin Voyages cruises that already make stops in Barcelona, Palma and Ibiza. “We don’t have any other immediate plans for Spain, but I’m sure more things will come in the coming years”, describes the businessman, who defines the hotel in Son Bunyola as “a dream come true”. Born into a wealthy family, but far from the current abundance that is attributed to his finances, Branson has taken advantage of the opening of the hotel in Majorca to repeat to all who ask him his idyll with the Spanish island. He visited it as a child with his family, he opened his first hotel there, the luxurious La Residencia, located in Deià and currently operated by Belmond since he also sold it in the 1990s.
It was in that same decade that Branson bought the Son Bunyola estate: 540 hectares with a century-old building whose oldest part is a 13th-century watchtower (which now houses a suite). And all this in the foothills of the Sierra de Tramuntana. “I had never really seen anything so nice,” he recalls, “I thought it was worth trying to protect this and do something with it.” But the story of the current 26-room hotel (from 800 euros per night in high season, 600 euros in low season) is more convoluted. After a first project that added new constructions and did not have the support of the Banyalbufar City Council, Branson sold the building in 2002. In 2015 he would buy it back to give it the definitive boost, with a lesson learned: “We know that there will be no more buildings”.
an “adventurer”
Branson fantasizes about vacationing at the latest property in his collection: “If I stayed here I would cycle two to three hours every day, go rock climbing and kiting either paddleboarding while my wife could choose to sit by the pool, I think Son Bunyola has it all,” he says. The reality is that the businessman, who defines himself as “an adventurer”, knows that this is not possible because the following week he will be walking along the banks of the Zambezi River. And it is precisely in Africa that he has four of his eight Virgin Limited Edition establishments, the brand that brings together the most luxurious accommodation in the group and to which Son Bunyola has been added.
Necker Island also belongs to this, a private paradise that Branson bought for himself in the British Virgin Islands, where he officially resides. The tax consequences of that decision raised a storm in the Anglo-Saxon media a decade ago. And they have been revived this week when, in the framework of a legal dispute that Virgin maintains with a US railway company, the latter’s lawyers have brought up some internal emails. In one of them, the CEO of the group, Josh Bayliss, said that Branson “has paid the lowest possible taxes”, according to Reuters in an information published after the businessman’s visit to Mallorca. The company has always defended that these are “opportunistic” accusations that are based on “cynical” arguments that seek to damage the reputation of the Virgin brand.
Accustomed to generating headlines, such information has clouded Virgin’s latest milestone. On June 29, he inaugurated his commercial trips to space, although with a flight where only astronauts were going. “I sense that in 50 years there will be trips to the Moon and that there will be a hotel there, perhaps a Virgin one,” says the founder. He knows what it’s like to be away from Earth, although he doubts if this has been his most extreme adventure: “Space was a dream and it’s been 25 years trying to make it a reality,” he says, “but flying around the world was a crazy, it was very exciting, and I was very lucky to survive that. Pausing often to think about what he’s going to say next, Branson ponders his response: “I’m equally proud of both.”
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