Virgin territory: Brazil exports the executive motel--rooms rented by the hour--to Spain.

Thirty-seven years ago, Evaristo Gonzalez, a Spaniard who emigrated to Brazil from Galicia, decided to invest in what at the time was a novel business concept: the luxury motel. Three generations later, his grandson Celso Gonzalez is following in his footsteps, repeating the formula in Spain, a country where the idea of a hotel directly associated with sex is not yet culturally understood. A little more than a year ago, the young Gonzalez opened his first property in Alcala de Henares, 30 kilometers from Madrid, called the Zouk Motel. "In the first year, we billed half of what we projected, but it's important to note that our goal wasn't realistic, since it was based on the earnings of my family's hotels in Brazil," Gonzalez says.

The goal had been to post revenues of US$3.6 million, a figure that each hotel in Brazil manages each year. In Spain, the company decided to invest $18,000 a month in advertising to reach potential customers, in order to explain to them how the Zouk works as a daring kind of lodging concept. "In this sense, the mentality of Brazilians and Spaniards is different. In Brazil, people go to hotels to make love. In Spain, the intention is to have a good time enjoying a heated pool, have lunch and go to a sauna. If sex happens, it happens," says Gonzalez. He spends 80% of that ad budget on billboards and the like, which have proven to be the most efficient means of making the motel known to potential trysters.

Gonzalez, meanwhile, calculates that Zouk will meet expectations within two years. "I have expansion projects ahead and should open other motels in Valencia, Barcelona and Sevilla," he says. His grandfather's story gives him strength. The elder Evaristo, four decades ago, watched as truckers stopped at bars along the highway from Minas Gerais to Sao Paulo to drink coffee or beer, and he noticed that locals offered them rooms for rent, by the hour, for couples. He decided to build on that idea, but for higher-profile customers. In 1969, he opened Motel Havaii, in Belo Horizonte, with 20 rooms. Two years later, he opened in Bariloche, Sao Paulo, but a luxury place with private pools. A short while later, the motel turned business had turned into a family empire. Today there are eight big motels, with 40 to 80 rooms each, in Sao Paulo, by the names Caribe, Opium, Belle de Jour, Thamatam, Classe A, Golf, Black Horse and L'Amour, and two in Belo Horizonte, the Havaii and one called Astral. Altogether, they can handle nearly 500 guests.

Day rate. In each Gonzalez family motel in Brazil nearly 4,000 guests a month check in and check out. The Zouk, the only luxury motel so far in Spain, has a monthly flow of 1,200 guests. "In Madrid, the law does not allow charges by the hour. So, although the customer might want barely six hours, the rate is still for a whole day," says Celso Gonzalez. As a result, many of the Zouk's customers treat it as they would any other hotel.

The initial investment to build the Zouk, which is 6,300 square meters and has 70 rooms, each with a private garage, was $12 million. Fifteen of the apartments have a pool, sauna and skylight; 27 of them have baths with hydromassage. Two have waterbeds, four with pools, a Jacuzzi and sauna. Two of them are adapted for persons with physical disabilities, and the remaining rooms are ordinary. Daily prices range from $95 to $465. Motel workers say that, on weekends, there are many customers in their thirties who want entire apartments.

The expansion of the motel market probably won't keep up with the growth of ordinary hotels in Spain, says Jesus Gatell Pamies, president of the country's hotel association and of the tourism commission of the Madrid Chamber. "The motel business probably will grow slowly. But the Zouk is a very interesting proposition and it will cover a niche that had not before been served," says Gatell Pamies. "As Latin American immigrants arrive here, from countries where the motel is culturally accepted, it will likely influence behavior."

PRISCILA GUILAYN * MADRID