WE’RE NOT GETTING GREEDY!

get greedy, but we are trying to keep it at 65 euros a head, up about 10 euros from before the pandemic.”

It has certainly been anything but plain sailing for the businessman, who struggled through the pandemic, not to mention Brexit and six years of recession before that.

Having over 200 staff between the various businesses, it wasn’t easy to survive the two years of Covid, he admits. “We got very little support from the government and while many of the staff went on furlough we still had to pay their social security, meaning we made quite a big loss.”

However, the last 18 months have really seen the business bounce back, bringing the highest turnover and profits since opening in 2008, initially at the beach club site.

Meanwhile, reservations for La Sala by the Sea itself have gone through the roof this year, which should serve as a great barometer of the season ahead.

Before opening in a week’s time, it already has a staggering 10,000 bookings for the season, which compares to 6,000 bookings in the last comparable year of 2019.

“It is an exciting time and we are really happy that people are finally booking their holidays again nice and early,” explains Radford.

“They get their flights sorted and next it is the beach beds and restaurant bookings, well before arrival.”

He is hoping that the strong recovery in the tourist market helps to make a string of other plans for the season to go ahead swimmingly.

The first in an exciting roll out of new ventures is the re-opening of The Oak restaurant across the road from La Sala.

A complete redesign by a local firm will see the venue become a stylish, high end cocktail and wine bar, with food, open in early June.

“We are spending a lot of money on it and with a proper new roof it will be able to stay open for 12 months of the year,” explains Radford, whose wife Claire Strutton runs the beach club.

The group also owns the Havana bar in San Pedro, run by his daughter, and has recently bought a 60 foot motorboat, anchored in Puerto Banus, which will be able to take clients on day cruises and nighttime charters.

Part of the entire package the group aims to give its customers, there is also soon to be a bowling alley and golf simulator venue below the main restaurant, where it used to have a nightclub. And then there is the sports bar, the Clubhouse, which should be open by the summer, as well as La Sala Homes, a real estate arm, set to open soon next door.

“And once the new Marbella town plan is finalised we hope to open a hotel upstairs over two floors,” adds the businessman, who is also in the process of planning a 12-bedroom luxury hotel and spa in Malaga city. Clearly, never standing still, he has just acquired a country home in the Serrania de Ronda, where he insists he and his wife are never happier.

As if he needed a sign of the good omens ahead, just as he’s telling me that legendary 80s pop star and TV presenter Boy George is set for a trip over in June, on comes his hit Do you Really Want to Hurt Me? With this much enthusiasm and joie de vivre, there can’t be many.

STARS:

Don’t get stuck!

WHETHER it was Diana Dors or Sean Connery, Ava Gardner or Audrey Hepburn, James Hunt or Rod Stewart, none would have come to Marbella without the influence of Prince Alfonso de Hohenlohe.

For the German aristocrat was the svengali with the necessary capital to turn the dusty village into a highfalutin millionaires playground to rival the likes of Cannes and Deauville, in France.

It was in 1947 that the charismatic playboy had been sent to the coast by his father Prince Maximilian to purchase some land. The family already had business interests in southern Spain, particularly in Malaga.

The 23-year-old was told to hook up with his eccentric uncle Ricardo Soriano, who had been eulogising about the merits of the coast for a number of years.

A huge fan of watersports, Soriano especially liked powerboat racing and lived an enviable bohemian life.

He was soon chaperoning his nephew up and down the coast in his vintage Rolls-Royce looking for land.

The bilingual Alfonso – who was a keen painter - was immediately taken by what he saw in Marbella.

Sheltered by the dramatic Sierra Blanca and with crystal-clear waters just a stone’s throw away, the savvy prince immediately saw a wealth of opportunities.

He ordered his father to sell off his wine cellars in Malaga and began developing his now seminal Marbella Club hotel, which opened in 1954.

But that was not enough and the well-connected prince soon embarked on a European-wide campaign to convince all his high-flying friends that Marbella, not San Sebastian or Cannes, was the only place to be.

And his campaign worked with the grand families of central Europe, including the Bismarcks, Rothschilds and Metternichs, coming to see what the fuss was about.

A string of celebrities followed suit, with actresses including Elizabeth Taylor and Sophia Loren, photographer Patrick Lichfield, footballer George Best, model Brigitte Bardot, and Rolling Stone Bryan Jones joining the in-crowd. Even British aristocracy got in on the act, with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (Edward and Mrs Simpson) visiting the hotel.

“The people I met in Hollywood, in New York, and in Europe, they were the roots, the bridge that brought people to Marbella… who made Marbella,” explained Marbella took pride in being cut off from the hectic, stressful and often scary modern world.

Indeed, news of the Cuban Missile Crisis did not reach the resort until it