Collective Hospitality buys SELINA in Panama
Selina really had a dream start: it was founded in 2015 by two Israeli friends who were traveling the world and fell in love with the beaches of Pedasí, a small Panamanian town located at the southeastern tip of the Azuero Peninsula on the Pacific.
Source: Israel Económico
The Collective Hospitality group, which operates mainly in Southeast Asia, announced the acquisition of most of the assets of the Selina hotel chain, thus putting an end to the commercial fairy tale started by two young Israeli travelers in Panama.
Daniel Rudasevski and Rafael Museri had arrived in Panama years before, but it was in Pedasí that they decided to apply their entrepreneurial real estate spirit. They traveled to Israel to raise funds, returned to Panamanian soil and bought the land for the first hotel.
That first accommodation quickly caused a revolution by combining luxuries typical of high-end boutique hotels with the sense of community experienced in backpacker hostels around the world.
In April 2019, when it was announced that Selina had raised $100 million in a round of investment funding, Museri explained that, as seen in several industries, “millennials and Generation Z are redefining how they want to live, work and explore the world.”
From the beginning, their hotels also combined a strong local cultural color with large coworking spaces.
On the back of tremendous success, Rudasevski and Museri bet on a very aggressive expansion, opening dozens of new hotels from Mexico to Costa Rica or Nicaragua, Israel, Portugal and Morocco, Thailand, Argentina, Brazil and Colombia, among many others.
The company, recalled the Israeli economic newspaper Globes when reporting the news of the sale, has been listed on Wall Street since 2022, after completing a merger with a valuation of $1.2 billion.
But that value practically vanished in July of this year, when Selina declared itself insolvent due to liquidity difficulties. The collapse came after the company closed some unprofitable hotels, laid off employees and reached debt agreements with creditors, Globes added.
Hotel industry analysts explained that the probable reason for Selina's fall is its voracious growth, especially considering that global lodging chains are expanding slowly while consolidating their accounts.
In a statement, Collective Hospitality spokesmen said they will seek to maintain the innovative character of Selina, the company born in 2015 in Panama.
The acquisition, they said, "represents an important milestone in Collective's strategic expansion" in the field of business travel, lifestyle and experiences.
With the purchase of nearly one hundred Selina hotels in twenty-two countries, "Collective Hospitality is now one of the largest owners of lifestyle hotels," they said.
“The integration of Selina’s distinctive spirit” and its loyalty program – the spokespersons completed from Singapore, where the buyers are based – will allow Collective “to meet the changing demands of millennial and generation Z travelers looking for authentic, community-driven experiences.”