Rafael Nadal doesn’t want to be your average retiree. For most people, retiring with millions in the bank is the kind of dream that ends with a lifetime of lie-ins and leisure. But not Nadal.
After over two decades of competing, the Spaniard wrapped up one of the greatest tennis careers in history—22 Grand Slams, a record 14 French Open titles, 209 weeks as world No. 1, and a $220 million net worth—in November 2024. But instead of kicking back, Nadal’s been busy building a hotel empire.
“I am not the kind of guy that likes to wake up in the morning and don’t know what to do,” Nadal told CNBC last week. “My goal was to keep going.”
He said that spending time with his family, including his two young children, is important—then added, “but I like to work.”
“In the same way I built a legacy on the court, now is the moment to build a legacy outside of the court.”
Inside Rafael Nadal’s post-tennis empire: Hotels and a coaching business he part-sold for $107 million
Nadal just opened his fourth Zel Hotel in Fuerteventura, a beachfront, adults-only property in the Canary Islands. The 40-year-old explained that after spending most of his dazzling 23-year tennis career living in hotels, creating his own felt like a natural next step.
“That’s what I did during half of my life, and I know what I like the most,” he said.
He founded the hospitality brand Zel Hotels in 2022 in partnership with Meliá Hotels International. Just one year later, the brand opened its first hotel, ZEL Mallorca, and has since expanded in Costa Brava in Spain and Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic.
And hotels are just one part of his growing business empire. Nadal has been quietly building a post-tennis portfolio that spans hospitality, education, and sports, with most of it managed through his family holding company, Aspemir.
“This is something that, of course, is a lifetime project for me, very personal, but at the same time, the company has grown over the last couple of years, and we felt that we needed some help to keep growing and to keep expanding,” Nadal added.
Before Zel Hotels, he opened the Rafa Nadal Academy in Mallorca in 2016 for elite tennis coaching, which has now grown into a network of tennis academies and sports centers around the world, including in Mexico, Greece, Kuwait, Hong Kong, and the Dominican Republic.