Rafael Nadal says he spent most of his tennis career living out of hotels.
“That’s what I did during half of my life, and I know what I like the most,” he told CNBC. So opening his own felt natural.
The 22-time Grand Slam winner, who retired from competitive tennis in November 2024, just opened his fourth hotel in the Canary Islands in Fuerteventura under his hospitality brand Zel Hotels, founded in 2022 in partnership with Meliá Hotels International.
The brand opened its first hotel, ZEL Mallorca, in 2023. Hotels in Costa Brava in Spain and Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic followed.
“I am not the kind of guy that likes to wake up in the morning and don’t know what to do, and my goal was to keep going,” Nadal told Tania Bryerfor “CNBC Meets,” to be released later this week.
“In the same way I built a legacy on the court, now is the moment to build a legacy outside of the court.”
“In the same way I built a legacy on the court, now is the moment to build a legacy outside of the court,”
Rafael Nadal
FORMER TENNIS CHAMPION.
Mallorca-born Nadal added that people had started spending more on experiences, making hospitality a burgeoning area to invest in.
But he said that building a brand was “a challenge in the beginning,” as the space is so competitive.
How sports prepared Nadal for business
Nadal, who won a record 14 French Open titles and Olympic gold twice, said sports taught him “to tolerate the frustration, you learn to work as a team, you learn to accept that sometimes you lose, you need to manage the victories, because it doesn’t matter if you win, you have to play the next day.”
Nadal described how he spent a year recovering from hip surgery in 2023, not knowing he would have to retire, which he ultimately did.
“It was not easy, but then when I knew that it was the end for me, it was a change in my life after doing almost the same thing all my life, but I was prepared for it, and I was prepared to have the next chapter in my life.”