The uniqueness of Sant Pau Art Nouveau Site

Thursday evening, GNMI students enrolled in the Industrial and Services Marketing course attended the lecture of Marc Guerrero, deputy managing director of the Sant Pau Art Nouveau Site.

Marc Guerrero holds a PhD in Social Sciences and has an international academic background: he has studied at Berkeley and the London School of Economics. His academic fields include international relations and business administration. He has also founded his own company, Ginteco, which specialises in international trade and consultancy.

For the last 10 years, Guerrero has been working as a deputy managing director of the Sant Pau Art Nouveau Site. Sant Pau is the largest art nouveau complex in the world, with more than 145.000 square metres.

Guerrero briefly explained the history of the Sant Pau foundation –which goes back to the XVth century– and the XIXth century modernista complex. Nowadays, though, the Sant Pau site is more than an art nouveau space. It hosts several resident organisations working in the fields of innovation, sustainability, health and culture. Among the institutions placed in Sant Pau, the UN-Habitat, the World Health Organisation or the Barcelona Health Hub, for example.

Due to its history, internal organisation, and societal commitment, Sant Pau’s site has to follow a specific marketing strategy that takes into account its unique space, governance, and foundational purpose. Therefore, the marketing mix considers product, price, place and promotion according to the aims of Sant Pau foundation –history and innovation, past and future, and commitment with the society.

Guerrero also explained that the complex has three main business units: visits, resident institutions, and rental venues for events and activities. Other than that, Guerrero said that the site does not work as a classic business regarding income investment. Instead, because of its foundational statute, all the revenues go to social programs, the hospital and keep the place’s legacy. That is the reason why the leeway of marketing strategy has to keep in mind all these aspects.