Rafael Nadal's Academy Network Just Grew Again, and It's Not His Only Hospitality Play

Rafael Nadal's business off the court keeps expanding well beyond tennis courts themselves. The latest addition, a new Rafa Nadal Tennis Center in Lombok, Indonesia, confirmed this week, marking the academy network's first entry into Southeast Asia.

The Lombok Announcement

The new center will open in the first quarter of 2028 as part of Samara Lombok, an exclusive resort on the island's south coast, roughly 25 minutes from Lombok International Airport. It will feature four hard tennis courts, four padel courts, an apparel and merchandise shop, and a cafe, offering programs for players of all ages and skill levels built around the training methodology Nadal and his team developed over two decades on tour.

Maribel Nadal, deputy general director of the Rafa Nadal Academy, said the team is excited to bring the first Rafa Nadal Tennis Center to Southeast Asia. The Samara Lombok resort itself is a significant project in its own right, spanning 150 hectares and set to become the first "Destination by Hyatt" property in the region, opening initially with three boutique hotels and 150 villas, with a master plan for up to 500 residential villas.

A Network That's Quietly Gone Global

Lombok becomes the ninth location in the Rafa Nadal Academy and Tennis Center network, and the first in Southeast Asia specifically. Alongside the original academy in Manacor, Mallorca, and the academy in Kuwait, the network now includes Rafa Nadal Tennis Centers in Costa Mujeres, Mexico, Sani, Greece, Hong Kong, Cairo, Egypt, Marbella, Spain, Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, and Porto Belo, Brazil.

The model behind these Tennis Centers is consistent: rather than owning and operating the properties himself, Nadal licenses his name, training methodology, and brand into resorts already being built or run by hospitality operators, in this case, Hyatt, through its Samara Lombok destination brand. It's a low-capital, high-reach way to plant the Rafa Nadal name in premium resort destinations worldwide, combining tennis and padel infrastructure with tourism and leisure.

The Other Hospitality Business: Zel

Less discussed alongside the academy expansion is Nadal's separate hotel venture, Zel, a lifestyle hotel brand launched in December 2022 as a joint venture with Melia Hotels International. Unlike the Tennis Center model, Zel is a genuine co-ownership structure, a 50/50 partnership between Nadal and Melia, built around a Mediterranean lifestyle concept rather than tennis specifically.

Zel opened its first property in Mallorca in 2023, followed by Zel Costa Brava later that year, and Zel Punta Cana in December 2024. The brand's stated ambition is roughly 20 hotels within five years, expanding across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas, including major cities like Madrid, Paris, and London, alongside the resort-style properties already open.

The distinction between the two ventures matters. The Rafa Nadal Tennis Center network is a licensing and brand-partnership play, tennis and padel infrastructure embedded inside someone else's hospitality project. Zel is Nadal as an actual hotel co-owner, building a lifestyle brand with no tennis branding attached at all. Together, they show two very different ways an athlete can monetize a global name in hospitality, one leaning on the sport itself as the draw, the other leaning entirely on personal brand and lifestyle appeal.

Why It Matters

Both ventures point to the same underlying strategy. Nadal's name has become valuable well outside the boundaries of a tennis court, and he's building parallel, complementary businesses to capture that value in different ways. The Lombok deal extends the tennis-specific brand into a market, Southeast Asia, where the sport is still developing relative to football or badminton, while Zel builds a hospitality identity that doesn't depend on tennis interest at all.

For resort operators and hotel groups, partnering with Nadal offers instant global recognition and a built-in audience of tennis and padel players looking for destinations that combine sport with leisure travel. For Nadal, it's a way to keep his name commercially active well into retirement from competitive tennis, across two distinct business models running at the same time.

Jake Scudder

Journalist – topics of tennis