How do you increase the arrival of international tourists by 1,000% in an area where there used to be nothing but small fishing communities?

Between 2015 and 2025, Punta Mita generated MXN $14.4 billion in revenue for DINE. The Mexican company has spent just over 30 years developing the property and, in the process, has turned it into a benchmark among the most luxurious destinations in Latin America.

The project itself, spanning 700 hectares (roughly twice the size of Central Park), includes three hotels, two golf courses, and around 850 houses and condominiums. Two more hotels are also under construction.

"Once a sleepy bohemian surf area with charming small towns, this stretch on the Riviera Nayarit has become one of the most private and secure locations in the world," Forbes wrote in 2016.

According to data from Mexico's Ministry of Tourism, over the past 25 years, the number of five-star hotel rooms in the state of Nayarit has increased 9.5-fold.

Like any major project in Mexico, it has not been free of controversy. But what is undeniable is that Punta Mita transformed what was once jungle, beaches, and small rural communities into one of the continent's highest-value tourism regions.

This is a brief account of its history.

Although it is a company in its own right—with shares listed on the Mexican Stock Exchange (BMV)—DINE is essentially the real estate arm of KUO, the holding company chaired by Fernando Senderos Mestre since 1989.

In 2025, KUO had total revenues of MXN $52 billion. It is Mexico's leading synthetic rubber producer (and one of the largest globally), manufactures polymers used in packaging and disposable products (such as yogurt containers), and also makes transmissions and auto parts. It is also Mexico's largest pork producer and a partner in Herdez del Fuerte and Megamex Foods (food products sold in supermarkets and all kinds of stores in Mexico and the U.S.).

Technically, DINE is not part of KUO. But Senderos Mestre chairs both companies, and they also share Alejandro de la Barreda as CEO (they even use the same photos in their annual reports).

Before being renamed KUO, the Senderos' company was called Desc and had become one of Mexico's largest and most diversified conglomerates since the 1980s. It already had four major divisions at the time: chemicals/petrochemicals, auto parts, food, and real estate.

In 2007—and after several years of crisis—they reorganized into two companies: KUO would remain on one side, bringing together the different businesses while leaving real estate aside. That part was spun off and became what is now DINE.

The Senderos already had a long track record as developers in Mexico. Before Punta Mita, Desc developed Bosques de las Lomas, Bosques de Santa Fe, Arcos Bosques, and Punta Ixtapa, among others.

Like other major developers, DINE's business consists of acquiring large land reserves, transforming them into high-value planned communities—residential, tourism, and hospitality—and monetizing them over development horizons spanning several decades.

It all begins by acquiring the land at the lowest possible value. The land on which Punta Mita now stands was part of the Bahía de Banderas Trust, created in the 1970s to promote the development of the region. Enrique Aldrete, a businessman from Jalisco who had previously developed the Puerto Vallarta marina and later partnered with Desc to launch the Punta Mita project, recalls in this interview how the property was acquired.

That land then needs to have "layers of value" added to it. This can range from basic infrastructure to a golf course and, of course, a hotel. In the case of Punta Mita, it was key that Four Seasons was willing to participate from the beginning.

According to legend, Punta Mita's developers managed to get Four Seasons founder Isadore Sharp to visit the area in the mid-1990s. Other hotel groups had avoided the project, but the Canadian "got hooked" and decided to partner with the Mexican businessmen to build one of his hotels there.

The first phase, which covered approximately 100 hectares, would include the hotel, a golf course (with a clubhouse), and a timeshare resort. Four Seasons would be the strategic partner, initially holding a 30.77% equity stake in the hotel, 12.31% in the golf course, and 30.77% in the timeshare development. Based on the relative sizes of the three components of this development, Four Seasons Hotels' total stake in this first phase was approximately 16%.

For Desc, this first phase would ultimately represent an investment of $100 million.

"Punta Mita illustrates our desire to capitalize on the foreign tourist market and is principally targeted at the Southwestern United States market," the company reported to the SEC in 1999.

As a brand, Four Seasons "legitimized" the development for potential tourists from the U.S. and Canada, allowing what is now DINE to begin developing and marketing the rest of the property.

"Until a few months ago, Punta Mita was just a point on the map of Nayarit," the newspaper El Norte stated in a 1999 article. "Now it is emerging as the most exclusive and luxurious development in Mexico and the only one with a golf course featuring eight holes along the oceanfront. This course, designed by golfer Jack Nicklaus, and the country's second Four Seasons hotel are the complex's calling cards, located half an hour from Puerto Vallarta."

Along with the hotel, which opened at the end of 1999, the first phase included the sale of 20 beachfront lots—each measuring 10,000 m², at an average price of $1.2 million—as well as 32 1,000 m² lots overlooking the golf course and the ocean ($500,000 per lot).

Immediately afterward came a project with 65 Four Seasons-branded villas (around the hotel), along with 37 timeshare units. All of these residences would have access to the hotel's common areas, restaurants, and spa.

In the second phase, they developed three additional residential projects and sold a parcel of land to investors who would begin building what would eventually become a St. Regis hotel and 56 timeshare villas.

Excluding roads and shared areas, spaces reserved for green areas, service areas, and future golf courses, Desc reported to the SEC in 2003 that it had 2.75 million m² available for sale in Punta Mita (and that it owned 100% of it). By that time, it had already sold its stake in Four Seasons for $52 million (which years later would be acquired by Bill Gates' Cascade Investment in a $200 million transaction).

Punta Mita was conceived as a planned community, with what needed to be built over the following three decades envisioned from the outset.

This is reflected in how the property was developed and marketed. The company kept adding "layers of value" to the land: the golf course, the hotel, the first villas, beach clubs, etc., and everything clearly feels like part of the same whole. There are no improvised streets or structures.

Ten years after the development was launched, around 70% of Punta Mita's buyers were from the U.S.

"(…) a new wave of cosmopolitan, higher-spending residents has begun to roll in," The New York Times noted in a 2016 article. "There's a big tech contingent but also financiers and media people."

By that year, DINE's development already had around 350 residences, some of which were worth more than $10 million.

"A number of the resort's subdivisions have sold out or have only a few remaining properties, and demand has meant that lot sales and construction of new residences for purchase are now underway," the NY Times reported.

Today, there are nearly 850 residences in Punta Mita, and DINE projects that the number will reach approximately 1,000 before 2030. That would mark the end of Punta Mita's development phase.

Developing Punta Mita has been a project that has faced a couple of pandemics, at least four major economic crises, and several periods of high insecurity in our country. Throughout that period, Mexico had two presidents from the PRI, two from the PAN, and two from Morena.

The difficulties do not end there. From its beginnings, the development first faced accusations of evicting local residents, and later disputes over the "privatization of beaches." Just a few months ago, El País published an article describing a conflict with residents of Punta de Mita—the neighboring community—who want to stop the construction of one of the planned new hotels because they claim they will lose access to the beach.

What is undeniable is that the entire area underwent a profound transformation over the last 40 years. After DINE brought Four Seasons to the area, everyone wanted to establish themselves there. In the following years, hotels such as St. Regis, One & Only, Auberge, Rosewood, Fairmont, and Ritz-Carlton arrived in what is now known as Riviera Nayarit, with Montage and Pendry on the way (the latter two within Punta Mita).

Bahía de Banderas, the municipality where Punta Mita is located, grew from 40,000 inhabitants in 1990 to more than 220,000 people registered in the 2025 census. Meanwhile, the surrounding municipalities basically remained stagnant. The number of hotels in Bahía de Banderas doubled between 2013 and 2026, translating into significant job creation.

As a development, Punta Mita sparked tourism growth in the area.

Value creation goes beyond selling a piece of land or a house: many of the residences DINE has developed over the years have been sold more than once or twice, generating the appreciation that comes with this (as well as the commissions generated by those transactions).

One point worth highlighting is that the profile of buyers is evolving. The average age used to be higher: while previously virtually all buyers were over 60, it is now not unusual to find people in their 50s and even some in their 40s. On the other hand, Mexican buyers are now much more common; local real estate specialists are seeing more and more buyers from Monterrey, for example.

According to an analysis by 4S Real Estate, the real estate consultancy, depending on location and product, cumulative appreciation between 2020 and 2026 has ranged from 50% to 90%—meaning that a property purchased in 2020 would today be worth the equivalent of 1.5 to 1.9 times its original price.

For DINE, Punta Mita has been the business that has commanded its attention over the past several decades; last year, it accounted for 92% of its revenues. They are not finished yet; in what will probably be the final phase, approximately $500 million is being invested in the new hotels, along with more than 120 residences associated with those brands.

"Punta Mita operates today as a fully consolidated residential and tourism community," the company states in its most recent annual report.

What's next? In Los Cabos, DINE already owns a 750-hectare property with 3.5 kilometers of beachfront along the Sea of Cortez. Named Punta Gorda, it is a project with a development horizon from 2025 to 2040, and it includes 650 residential units and at least one golf course.

For now, the effect of Punta Mita on the state of Nayarit has been transformative: the number of foreign tourists traveling to the state grew by nearly 1,000% between the mid-1990s and 2024.

BY RENE LANKENAU - Whitepaper Access.