Hard Rock will run the second of BCN World's 6 hotel and casino resorts

Barcelona (ACN).- The $6-billion BCN World has recruited another top international investor to manage the second mega-hotel of the total 6 that are planned to be built on a site next to the PortAventura theme park in Catalonia's Costa Daurada. The company promoting BCN World, Veremonte, had already reached an agreement with Chinese casino company Melco, Spanish hotel network Melià and UK shopping centre developer Value Retail a few months ago to build the first resort, comprising a large hotel, a mega-casino and a luxury shopping mall. In fact, as well as these facilities BCN World will have theatres, conference centres, parks, golf courses, beach clubs, technological institutes and residential and smart city areas. In addition, PortAventura joined the BCN World project and announced it would build 3,000 additional hotel rooms. A few days ago, Ferrari also announced it would put its European theme park next to PortAventura and the BCN World complex. However, despite these initial announcements, Veremonte was waiting for the new legal framework and town planning rules to be adapted in order to close further deals with other investors. These other investors would be the ones to develop the other 5 resorts of BCN World, which will be built around a commercial street, similar to the Las Vegas' Strip.  In fact, once built, the area of BCN World and PortAventura, including Ferrari Land, would be Europe's biggest holiday resort. Last weekend, the Catalan Government – which is run by the Centre-Right Catalan Nationalist Coalition (CiU) – and the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC) signed an agreement to adapt the legal framework. Three days later, this Wednesday, Veremonte's CEO Xavier Adserà announced that Hard Rock will be joining the project.

In a conference organised by PWC and La Vanguardia on Wednesday in Barcelona, Xavier Adserà announced that Hard Rock is about to close a deal with Veremonte to join the BCN World project. Adserà warned that the deal had not been “100% closed”, but he said it could already be announced. Hard Rock will build its largest hotel in Europe. It will be entirely devoted to music. Rooms will have top quality sound systems and the largest ones will also have musical instruments inside, such as a piano. Adserà explained that Hard Rock already runs 10,000 hotel rooms through the world, for example in Las Vegas.

The US company has a strong bond with Barcelona, where it runs a coffee bar and restaurant located at the heart of the Catalan capital, in Plaça Catalunya. In fact, according to Veremonte's CEO, Barcelona's Hard Rock Café is the company's most profitable one in the world per square metre. Adserà said that the brands of Barcelona and Hard Rock are complementary, since they are both associated with a young target, culture and fun.

Finally, the President of BCN World also explained that Hard Rock is present in the new large-scale holiday resorts that are being built throughout the world; by having this brand in the new BCN World, Adserà hopes to attract a young clientele. Furthermore, Hard Rock has a strong attraction power in the United States, while the Catalan project also has the Chinese company Melco involved in building a mega-casino. Veremonte's CEO highlighted the fact that Catalonia and BCN World are located half-way between America and Asia, and therefore visitors from both the United States and China are expected to come.

In addition, Xavier Adserà praised the high quality of the transport infrastructure already built in the area where BCN World will be located. It is near Reus Airport, near a High-Speed Train station, near the Port of Tarragona, near the AP-7 highway and one hour’s drive from Barcelona and El Prat Airport. Furthermore, it will be built next to PortAventura, which already receives 4 million visitors per year, and out of the 16 million foreign tourists who travelled to Catalonia in 2013, 5 million visited the Costa Daurada, where BCN World will be located. For these reasons, Adeserà declared that BCN World is "not starting from scratch" but it is "jumping on an ongoing train".

Finally, Adserà insisted that gambling will be only a small part of BCN World. He emphasised that the project's main business focuses will be family tourism and conference and convention visitors. Adserà stressed that Catalonia had a great deal of experience in organising such events. In fact, PortAventura has a conference centre and is already organising important events, which has allowed the theme park to open earlier this year, since there were already visitors around in the winter time. BCN World will attract further conferences and visitors, allowing the area to host tourists year-round and not only in the summer months.