BY AL HUXLEY
More hotels, for sure. But not that many rooms, so don’t go berserk. Starting in November, the first new hotel to open is the Grand Velas Boutique with 79 rooms, followed in February by the second Four Seasons with 100 rooms. Then in June comes the Park Hyatt at Cabo del Sol with 163 rooms and 19 villas and residences. In July, the Soho House with 70 keys and the St. Regis Los Cabos with 74 villas and condominiums will be opening, followed by Amanvari by Aman hotels with 24 residences at Costa Palmas in the East Cape at the end of 2024. That’s less than 600 luxury units and, so far, no other hotels have been announced.
Then we all see the dozens, if not hundreds of new construction projects popping up, not only in Los Cabos but everywhere in the state. The state’s Economy Secretariat is reporting that we received USD 474.3 million in direct foreign investment in the first semester of this year. No wonder.
Coming soon is Be Grand, a Mexican luxury real estate developer who is eyeing Los Cabos and the Nayarit Riviera for its next venture in the country.
“We’re looking at beaches,” Be Grand Chief Executive Officer Nicolas Carrancedo said in an interview from his office in Santa Fe, Mexico City. The money flowing from the US to Los Cabos is “out of control” and he wants a slice of it while the timing is still right. “It’s too late for Tulum. I’d say about 10 years too late,” he added.
And what about residential rentals? Glad you asked. The Softec real estate analysis company is estimating that the revenue from vacation rentals in the different tourist destinations in Mexico will reach $7 billion in 2030. Last year, 20,000 rental properties were sold in Mexico for USD 5.5 billion, marking an 87.5% growth in recent years.
Then comes PropTech, which arrives with Naya Homes, a company specializing in vacation and short-term rentals. It is expanding its operation to Los Cabos, following tremendous success in Mexico City, Puerto Vallarta and the Nayarit Riviera where it manages over 200 properties.
Proptech, or property technology, is all the tech tools real estate experts use to optimize the way people buy, sell, research, market, and manage a property. These innovative technologies are also known as Real Estate Tech, Retech, Realtech, and Commercial Real Estate (CRE) Tech, depending on which lens you’re looking through. However, at its core, prop tech always means robust alignment between real estate and technology.