This Boutique Hotel Group Has The Top-Ranked Resort In Tulum

Forbes

7 hours ago

Often, when new CEOs take the helm at a hotel group, they come with a list of things they believe need to be changed, improved, renovated, or revamped. For travel industry veteran Paul Cohen, he says, his biggest job is getting the good word out in a field crowded with new hotels and lots of public relations buzz that Colibri Boutique Hotels are already well-polished gems.
The current group features four hotels in Tulum, one in Nicaragua, and a separate hotel in Baja California about an hour-and-a-half south of Tijuana. However, it's the Yucatan Peninsula that is expected to be the brand's primary focus.
The hotels are family-owned by an Australian entrepreneur whom Cohen got to know during the Covid pandemic, when they were both living in Nicaragua, where Cohen owned a small resort at the time.
"We would have lunch quite often together. We got to know each other," Cohen says. Then, about six months ago, Cohen says he received a call from his old friend, asking him to Tulum and take a look. At the time, he was running his own sports and travel marketing business.
As Cohen explains it, the hotels had been doing very well without much of a sales or marketing effort, but as competition increased in Tulum, the properties were suddenly losing ground.
As a consultant, Cohen told the owner, "Operationally, everything is great. These are beautiful properties."
However, he said, the group was lacking the needed outreach to travel advisors who now dominate the luxury resort market, and was not active with the destination management companies, who can arrange local experiences beyond the resorts. He also told the owner that the websites, not the hotels, needed the upgrades.
Two months ago, the owner called Cohen to tell him that the CEO resigned. Would he come down and take the helm?
"If I was just walking into a new hotel company, I'm too old to start studying everything and trying to hit the ground running, but here, I knew the properties, I knew the staff, I knew the systems," Cohen says, adding, "Basically coming in, the analogy of a football team, as the coach of the team, but I already knew the players, I knew the competition."
Cohen says the most significant changes were in the back office, where he modernized revenue management so that rates and availability are updated, and booking is travel-agent-friendly. 'You can't make it hard to do business with you, and that's what we were doing,' he says.
Now, with so much buzz around Tulum, he says, part of the challenge is to explain what the four properties are not. 'While Tulum has become known as a Caribbean hot spot for partying, that's not our vibe,' he says. The Colibri resorts offer a range of authentic and sophisticated dining options, wellness, fitness, family activities and soft adventure. "You have great beaches, you have Mayan ruins, you can swim in Cenotes, you have great restaurants. You can party because there are places to party in Tulum. We're not the place where there is loud music."
In terms of geography, Cohen notes that two hotels are located in the resort area, immediately next to each other. About four kilometers away are the other two properties, both of which are next to each other, and those are in the national park area. All of its properties are on the beach.
Cohen says the group is a well-known player locally. The largest property is La Zebra, with 40 rooms. It gets a 4.8 out of 5 stars on TripAdvisor and 9.4 out of 10 on Hotels.com. Staff, service, cleanliness, property condition, and facilities were rated a 9.6.
While Cohen admits, "none of our properties have the big booming nightlife… we're not the crazy beach clubs," he says that, and the fact that there is a wide range of accommodations to meet different budgets, is what gives the group's hotel a loyal following.
Lula, La Zebra's next-door neighbor, gets a perfect 5.0 rating on Tripadvisor, ranking it first out of 243 accommodations in Tulum featured on the website.
Cohen says the two properties in the national park, Mezzanine and Mi Amor, are adults only and thus popular with couples. They each have similarly high ratings.
In a time when consumers are rebelling against sky-high hotel prices and service that doesn't seem to keep up, Cohen says his collection, currently part of Small Luxury Hotels, offers high value with offseason rates starting at around $300 per night and suites in the $1,500 per night range.
Tulum's Felipe Carrillo Puerto International Airport, with international flights nonstop from the United States, is increasingly accessible; however, Cohen says many visitors still fly into Cancun, about 75 miles to the north, where there are still massively more flight options.
During meetings at Virtuoso Travel Week, last week in Las Vegas, Cohen said his view of the properties and their online ratings was reinforced by travel advisors who told him an increasing number of clients are looking for authentic boutique hotel experiences with reasonable pricing.
Don't look for massive expansion. Right now, Cohen says there could be some opportunities locally.