Revolution, Hilton team up to deliver Waldorf Astoria in Costa Rica

Business Journals

23-04-2025

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The Waldorf Astoria Costa Rica Punta Cacique has been in the works for nearly two decades.
In August 2007, Revolution LLC co-founder Steve Case and then-Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez jointly announced a new luxury, oceanfront resort Case was bringing to the Cacique peninsula in the Guanacaste province.
More than 15 years later, the Waldorf Astoria Costa Rica Punta Cacique has finally opened as a joint venture between Revolution Places — the real estate and hospitality arm of D.C. venture capital firm Revolution — and the Waldorf Astoria's parent company, McLean-based Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. (NYSE: HLT), the companies announced Tuesday.
The beachfront resort has 188 rooms, a multilevel pool, 10,000 square feet of meeting space, a 17,000 square-foot spa and gym. It also has an eye toward sustainability, with native plants that help reduce water use on the property and greenery-covered rooftops to manage heat.
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Hilton and Revolution have also built 40 permanent homes on the site — 20 fully furnished 'estate homes' with private pools and 20 condos — and plan to continue adding homes, lodging and other amenities on the roughly 600-acre property in the near future, the companies said.
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The hotel's rooftops are covered in greenery.
Revolution
'Growing up in Hawaii, I saw firsthand how the economy evolved from agriculture to tourism, and how that transformation strengthened Hawaii's economy and increased the value of resort real estate,' Case said in a statement. 'Guanacaste is now on a similar journey, offering a rare chance to invest in an extraordinary and accessible destination, while it remains an emerging opportunity.'
Case and Revolution Places did not have any specific plans for the roughly 600-acre site when they purchased it in 2006, a spokesperson for Revolution told me over email Wednesday. However, when Case and the Costa Rican president announced the pending project in 2007, Revolution was partnering with One&Only Resorts to build 120 villas on the site, the Washington Business Journal reported at the time. One&Only was also planning to build a spa, an 18-hole golf course, tennis courts and a fitness center.
That project was estimated to cost $800 million, with an initial target date of 2010, but that was eventually scrapped and the two parted ways. A Revolution spokesperson declined to disclose the cost of the new resort because the project is ongoing.
Launched in 2006, Revolution Places has backed travel-themed companies, such as Miraval Resorts, which operates luxury resorts and spas in three states, and Exclusive Resorts, a membership-based travel booking service that owns more than $1 billion in luxury real estate in such locales as Napa Valley in California and the Hamptons on Long Island. It is also an investor in Maui Land & Pineapple Co. (NYSE: MLP), an operating company that owns more than 22,300 acres of land in Maui used for a combination of conservation and agricultural and commercial uses.
Revolution Places was also part of a 2016 effort to bring the first U.S. location of Paris-based MOB Hotel to D.C. as part of a mixed-use development at 400 Florida Ave. NE. MOB Hotel will open its D.C. location in 2027, according to the company's website.
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