SilverDoor Apartments is opening its first office in Spain as the serviced apartments agency expands following the acquisition of competitor The Apartment Service in September.
The company is due to open a new office in central Madrid in the next few days to boost its presence in Spain and Portugal, as well as targeting the Latin American market.
Group CEO Stuart Winstone also confirmed that The Apartment Service brand disappeared on 1 April with its operations now coming under the SilverDoor banner, with all staff being moved over to an expanded SilverDoor operation.
“We have recently been focusing on a group-wide simplification and branding project – we had 11 businesses with 18 brands, many of which we no longer used,” explained Winstone.
“We decide to have two core agency brands – SilverDoor and Domus Stay, which is a joint venture offering luxury homes.
“It was a really hard decision – The Apartment Service started in 1981 – but we decided to retire the brand rather than having two agency brands. We want to capture everything that was great about The Apartment Service and build that into the enhanced SilverDoor proposition.”
Winstone said that opening an office in Madrid would allow it to expand across the Iberian peninsula as well as target Latin America.
“I’m really delighted to be launching our first regional office in Iberia,” he said. “Around 70 per cent of Iberian prospects are based in Madrid and Madrid airport is also the best-connected airport for Latin America.”
Winstone said business for SilverDoor had been “buoyant” in recent months, with bookings reaching record-breaking levels in five of the past six months.
“March was double what we forecasted with lots of people getting back to travelling. One contributing factor was supporting a lot of clients with Ukraine evacuations,” added Winstone.
“We have also been relocating people from Russia. These were families so they really needed apartments. They have gone all over Europe but primarily to cities like Prague, Warsaw and Budapest, as well as Dubai and Abu Dhabi.”
Winstone said serviced apartments had “come into their own” during the pandemic, particularly during periods when most hotels were closed.
“The level of interest from travel managers is increasing and there’s more of a focus on serviced apartments than in the past – they are giving it more attention,” he said.
Following the integration of The Apartment Service staff, SilverDoor now has just over 150 employees across its offices in London and Lancaster in the UK, Denver in the US and Singapore. It also has a technology development centre in Hyderabad in India.