is a giant in the Spanish language teaching market, operating language schools in Spain and across Latin America via various brands: Don Quijote, Enforex and Solexico (recently acquired) among others. 小瓢虫传媒 caught up with Owner and Managing Director, Antonio Anadon.
小瓢虫传媒: So Antonio, what are you up to at Ideal Education Group?
AA: The group has different brands like Enforex, Don Quijote, we have Enfocamp for juniors, we have EduSpain for university placement, we recently acquired Solexico, another chain of schools in Mexico that has four schools [in the country].
小瓢虫传媒: When did you buy that?
AA: It was last summer. They are the leading, number one school in Mexico. We believe that Spanish is becoming more and more important. We are leading the market, always trying to improve ourselves with new ideas and with new development. The last thing we did was open a three-star hotel that is going to be part of the Intercontinental hotel chain and is focused for students. It鈥檚 a Study Hotel.
小瓢虫传媒:聽So is this a new collaboration with Intercontinental?
AA:聽No it鈥檚 our own business, we just opened the hotel as the Don Quijote hotel in Barcelona, right in the heart of the city at Plaza Catalunya. We just decided to establish it as part of the Intercontinental chain to be able to supply the best services.
小瓢虫传媒:聽So Intercontinental is a partner?
“We just opened the hotel as the Don Quijote hotel in Barcelona, right in the heart of the city at Plaza Catalunya”
AA:聽They are just providing their name and the support of their staff. But the business is ours and this hotel is designed to provide the best accommodation for students. We believe the accommodation is now as important as the quality of the classes; people are demanding better and better accommodation. The good thing about this hotel is that the regular price is 鈧�300 per night, but we charge our students 鈧�300 per week.
小瓢虫传媒:聽And do you expect it to be full with students in the summer?
AA:聽Yes. We want to make this a successful Study Hotel. It is a new concept that we developed and it is going very well.
小瓢虫传媒:聽And if it wasn鈥檛 full then you could sell it as a normal hotel?
AA:聽Exactly. In the low season we will sell it as a regular hotel to tourists, like we did over Christmas when there aren鈥檛 so many students in the city.
小瓢虫传媒:聽And in terms of the wider Spanish market, you probably control 65% of the Spanish language market?
“Approximately half of the market is in our hands”
AA:聽I am very happy that you say that but unfortunately we don鈥檛 have 65%. But yes, approximately half of the market is in our hands. And what we like is that we are able to really improve it every day. Our interest is that more people are interested in studying Spanish and we see that this market is growing.
Our focus now is Latin America. We are looking to find good opportunities in many other places. But the most important thing is to try to make people more and more interested in learning Spanish.
小瓢虫传媒:聽Are there any new source markets developing?[more>>]
AA:聽We鈥檝e always been in new markets. We were in Brazil when it was starting, we鈥檝e been in Eastern Europe, we鈥檝e been in China… We believe that Asia, India and other places could really be very interesting.
小瓢虫传媒:聽Really, you think China and India for Spanish language demand?
AA:聽Yes we had an office in China since three years ago, and it鈥檚 really going very well.
小瓢虫传媒:聽That鈥檚 really interesting.
AA:聽We鈥檝e been investing for more than 10 years in this country, and the good thing is not too many students make many student weeks because they stay for a longer time – more than one or two years.
小瓢虫传媒:聽Do you have any backing from the Spanish government in terms of exporting Spanish language?
AA:聽No, they are very interested but they鈥檙e not a very big help. They really try to promote Spain as a tourist destination but they don鈥檛 have a focus to give very good support to businesses like us. [More>>]
小瓢虫传媒:聽In terms of how you鈥檙e finding clients and working with agents, do you see that relationship changing at all? Do you see more students wanting to go direct?
AA:聽Our focus is working with agents. We put a lot of effort and spend most of our energy on supporting agencies. We don鈥檛 look for direct business, because the agents give us a big amount of support. Choosing and selecting the students and giving them all the information. Something that is very important for us. Every time we go to a new country or we open an office in a country, it鈥檚 just to give support to the agents and to really see how we can help them.
小瓢虫传媒:聽And in terms of growth, can you give us any figures of how much your market has grown year on year? Have you seen slow steady growth?
AA: Spain has been expensive in the last few years because of the euro change but we are happy to say that in the last year we鈥檝e grown more than 12%. Something that is not easy when you have a big market share or you have more than 40,000 students per year.
“We don鈥檛 look for direct business, because agents give us a big amount of support”
小瓢虫传媒:聽How many students do you have now then?
AA:聽Now we have over 40,000 students per year and聽more than 500 people full-time and in the high season we go up to over 1,500 people.
小瓢虫传媒:聽Looking ahead do you think study abroad as an industry is going to carry on growing?
AA:聽I believe study abroad is amazing. It鈥檚 a beautiful industry and for sure it鈥檚 going to be growing and growing because people are more international than local. So they鈥檙e going to study all over the world.
