Founder's Story - This Is How You Build a Hotel Without Owning the Land | Ep. 223 with Jorge Martinez and Andre Vinay co-founders of Black Development Group

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

Jorge Martinez and Andre Vinay, co-founders of Black Development Group, join Founder’s Story to reveal how they’ve reimagined hospitality by turning apartments into branded hotel-style residences. With a growing partnership with Wyndham, they’re building global investment-friendly resorts in places like Tulum, Los Cabos, and Punta Cana—offering individuals a new way to own a piece of paradise.Key Discussion PointsFrom Hot Dogs to Hotels: How Andre began as a teen entrepreneurThe Condo-Hotel Model: Why selling individual units funds entire resort buildsStrategic Partnerships: How Wyndham helped them go globalOwnership, Not Headaches: Giving investors turnkey properties without the hassleScaling Across Borders: Why Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic are nextLean Hotel Ops: How tech and outsourcing reduce overhead and boost profitDefining Success: Why they believe they're still just getting startedKey TakeawaysPartnership beats competition when scaling fastA profitable hotel doesn’t need a front desk—just a smart systemYou can own a slice of a global resort without building from scratchInnovation often lies in blending business models, not reinventing themOur Sponsors:* Check out Indeed: https://indeed.com/FOUNDERSSTORY* Check out Northwest Registered Agent and use my code FOUNDERS for a great deal: https://northwestregisteredagent.com* Check out Plus500: https://plus500.com* Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: https://www.rosettastone.com* Check out Square: https://square.com/go/founderAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Hey everyone, welcome back to Founder's Story. Today we have Jorge Martinez and Andre Vinay, the co-founders of Black Development Group. And Black Development Group is launching strategic tourist investments all around the world. And you're doing a very, very interesting strategy around real estate. I was just talking to some friends about so I wanted to make sure that we had some guests on That can really dive into this and I love this model around

apartments turned into Airbnb or short-term short-term living or it could be short-term vacation and It's just a unique model and people can have single owners. I love this whole model and I want to I want to dive in more but first Jorge can you start with what is the spark that made you say I want to be an entrepreneur? Hello, Daniel. Well, we've always I've always worked like in outside the corporate world. Since I was little, my dad was an entrepreneur himself.

I always tried to follow his steps. And during my pathway, I stumbled into Andres and we made a good partnership and we started with a company that did marketing and business strategy for different companies. So that's our background and we always try to get into the real estate industry because we both have a background from our families in that industry. So we always had it in our DNA, I can say. Before Andre, before you answer the same question, what has been a key to continuing a positive partnership?

And the reason I ask is, we have guests on who've had amazing partnerships and guests on who've had the worst partnerships. So what has worked for the two of you? And I think you even have another partner. Yes, hi, Daniel. How you doing? It's an honor to be here with you.

Yeah, that's true. It's complicated in the end. Friendship comes first. So, and respect for each other. It's been 20 years since we started with other businesses. We decided to do this business eight years ago and start Black Development Group. In order to get hotels, we were always wanted to have buildings and hotels all over the world so we decided to start this company by doing that.

When you thought to yourselves okay you were you had this other business before and now you're gonna get into real estate but it's not like selling homes right you're selling something much bigger resorts apartment complexes you know how this seems like a big task. How did you get into this? Well first we we wanted to to sell like real high-end apartments and in the meantime we we looked that there was a growing demand on what really the investors needed. That was to take care of their apartments because most of them don't know what it takes to take good care of your apartment.

So everything works as it has to. So when we started on the main principle in Tulum and Los Cabos, we wanted to have a model where you can buy your own apartment or house and we as a model can make sure that everything goes and works as it should be and you don't have to take care of anything on your end. So that's, that's mainly what we, we wanted to, to, to create. I know a lot of people that tell me I want to create a hotel or resort, but they don't realize how much work and effort and energy goes into not just building that, but you're building a brand, you're taking care of customers.

There's so many intricacies that are involved with this. So when you look at where you're going as like the first step, how do you choose the areas that you're going into? Basically what we did, we looked for places with a lot of tourism. You know, Toulouse was in a couple of years ago starting to get like a big boom. So we decided to start there.

We looked for a piece of land, basically what we could afford. Okay, we got a couple of friends and let's say let's go and buy the land. We're going to do this. We're going to do an apartment complex and we're going to sell it like a, like a hotel and operate it like a hotel. Everybody came up like, what? Yeah. Basically it's an Airbnb reloaded. You get all these apartments.

Everybody's doing it by themselves. Instead of doing that, let's hold good with one person one company with one focus and one price and we can we can get a better income out of it because of that you know you're not competing with it with your neighbor your neighbor is your partner in the end so what we did was that okay let's go let's let's sell a apartment so we can get enough money to build it because a hotel needs a lot of money to be built. So we decided to build it through apartments. Then we came up with the idea of instead of getting our own brand to come up to get close to these big brands like Wyndham and Harriet. And let's say they can put as a brand, they say, yeah, of course we can, we can franchise the brand, we can give

you all the things you need to do. If the brand has done the brand's done the standards and that could help us a lot with what we really knew anything about hotels, right. So that helped us a lot in order to get the hotel the way it should be, the back office, and a lot of things that we didn't even know that existed, right? So we did that. We got with Wyndham, a brand that's worldwide, pretty big. So we started with them. It's a brand. So we started with them, it's a brand, and from there on. So when you look at profitability, because I'm sure a big expense at a hotel could be people having a lot of people.

Recently I stayed at a boutique hotel that had one person and the rest were just cleaners because it was like this. Basically it books on Airbnb, it's very simple. There's no front desk. I was very fascinated with the models of some hotels versus other hotels. How do you see the future of hotels, but at the same time, maximizing profitability while you also have separate owners for many of the rooms? Yeah. As you say, the human resources are the key point in this business.

So the less people you have working in your hotel on site is the most profitable for the company at the end. This is the operating company for sure. In this case for the owners, no, because we have a lot of partners, depending on the number of units that we sell is the number of partners that we have, because we are not the ones that own the building. We are part of the building if we have one or two units in that building, as you might have one as well.

So it depends on that. So what we look for in our model is to make more efficient the operation and the cost efficiency. So the profit for everyone grows and everything works as it should. Yeah, sure. In the end, there's like two differences in this industry. The residence basically is what you had to the place you went. And the other one is the hotel operation. We have revenue, you have all this staff. So we're basically moving

on into the residents style. So yes you have front desk, yes you have some services, but let's say the restaurant. The restaurant we give it away to another company like Starbucks maybe and that company is gonna pay us a rent, it's gonna give out the breakfast and lunch or whatever. And that way we reduce all these, uh, this, uh, these people that are going to work with us, okay, reducing the costs and making it more profitable. Are you looking into how technology is transforming hospitality, hotels, operations, that kind of thing.

Is there anything that you're looking into or anything that you're doing or that you see in the future for how maybe AI or advanced technologies can help with these things that we're talking about? We think that the technology and in this artificial intelligence right now is going to revolutionize the industry for sure. Since you get to the complex, all your day to day on the room, on the common areas.

I mean, there is a lot still to be made. Already you can be inclusive, make check-in and check out since from your phone. And this is going to start going to faster as we, as we move on, but for sure we have to be there because it's, it's something that's happening already and it will, it will accelerate over the next years. In the operation, you get the room to operate the room from your phone, the TV, you get to ask the menu, you get everything in your phone nowadays. Technology is reducing the amount of people you need to do things.

You can get blinds to open, close, the air conditioner. In the end, it's getting all these rooms completely technolized. I'm so excited for these automations because I feel like a lot of times, bottlenecks sadly sometimes are people. You know, because people could be happy one day, they could be sad one day, and it can impact customer service but a lot of these automations can also speed things up while those people I think could be happier because maybe they don't have to deal with issues that might make them you know sad in their day-to-day work when you success through the both of you when you hear the word success or you

think about what success looks like, have you already reached a certain level of success and you're looking towards the next one? Or are you like, I haven't even reached what I would even define as success yet. And what does that look like? Wow, that's a good question. I think that success comes through time, I think that success comes through time, depending on where you want to be and when you reach where you want to be. But the truth is that you're never going to be there. I mean, the true, I mean, we're just getting started, I believe. So, so if you can define success as you had a successful development or useful every unit you had, or yeah, maybe we can say we were successful that way,

but we still have a lot to do. I think we're aiming for bigger things right now. And for sure, we're short from success from what we, from where we stand right now and For sure, we're short from success from what we from where we stand right now when you so what is your next? Milestone that you hope to achieve or what are you working towards as the next successful milestone? We want to reach Different countries we want to move on into a worldwide company Not just regional so that will be that next frontier, that next piece of success that you're looking for. And what other countries are you seeing? Because I know you mentioned in the beginning about you're looking at, you know, hot tourist areas or busy tourist places. Where in the world are you seeing? Are you allowed to talk about that?

Are you seeing are you allowed to talk about that? Yes, of course we're reaching you know Dominican Republic and Costa Rica Those would be the the next spots right now. Yeah coast. I feel like to loom I said I went to Costa Rica and then I went loom I almost felt like to loom was like it was like a Costa Rica meets like Bali I was just blown away about how busy Tulum has gotten. They do a phenomenal job of marketing. It's amazing how these cities or counties or provinces do an incredible job at marketing and all of a sudden that one specific place just explodes. Are you looking at certain areas in Dominican Republic now?

Basically in that in that area and mean Costa Rica. We don't we don't know yet. Where are we gonna do it? We have like four different spots. That's amazing. So if when you're talking to owners and or potential owners Do you do people normally go and visit they want to feel the experience see how it is or are people just so excited because it's a unique opportunity they do that it's an investment in the end many of them don't even know that the buildings were building they do they just want to invest with us and they put their confidence with us and basically what they're doing is that looking for a profit. In the end, eventually you're going to go to the hotel, a piece of hotel they own.

But normally they don't even know the place. Where is a place that you like to travel to in the world personally? Personally, I like Mexico a lot. the different cities here in Mexico. I like them a lot. And I will say maybe Europe for sure. All right. Well, I can't wait till you expand out to Europe too. I have to come in. I want to come and visit.

My wife and I visit a lot of hotels. We would rather not fly first class and stay at a nicer hotel. That's our thing. Our thing are hotels. We used to get a lot of points just to stay at hotels and such because I feel like that's almost the highlight. If you don't have a good experience at where you're staying, I almost feel like your whole trip, it's very hard to recover that trip. It really is something that you remember. You could have the best experience seeing the best sites, but if your stay was not a good experience, I almost would not even go back

to that city or town or country. It's very hard. So I can see the importance in what you're doing at the same time opening this up to investors because it is, like you said in the beginning, very, very hard to open a hotel yourself and to do everything. So at least they get you know they get a piece of it. If people want to get in touch with you, they want to find out more information. How can they do so? Basically well they can they can go into our website which is www.blackdg.com and all the info is there Or emails and everything is that it is in the in the web page They can get in contact with that with that with Windham. We work a lot with Windham. They go with them they can also reach us and We're we're here to hear any any questions they get. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that

so I think something you've done that is very special is this large partnership with Wyndham and I feel like partnerships is a really great way for companies to grow especially if you're trying to compete in a space you know with which with much more giants it's better to collaborate and partner. So how is that process of how you even got into that partnership? Well, when we started looking into the branded residence model or condo hotel model, we saw the perfect. One of the best things I've ever done for my personal growth was picking up a new language, whether you're traveling, leveling up your career or just love learning. Speaking another

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And partnering with Windom was very strategic for us because we were looking for a brand with a global recognition and strong operational standards and flexible development approach. And Windham was the one that checked all the boxes at the end. So it was a long process for aligning our visions, but I think today we have a good partnership with both, for both sides. I think they know us as well as how we work. And now we know how they work. So I think it's a partnership that can go on with more projects.

It's been challenging for Windham because in the end, the model we're using wasn't an approach they were using. They used hotels. They weren't used to having a condo, no? And all these condos are not operating like that. So it was a complete task for them in order to get us to work. So it was also difficult for them. Nowadays, the model is getting used all over the world. They're transporting all over the world. They used us as models for that. And well, it's been interesting. Wow. You're starting a whole new category. You know, you were there in the beginning in the first. Sounds like your partnership is going to flourish more. Yeah, Jorge and

Andre, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing all the insights and everything that you've been working on. And thank you for joining us on Founder's Story. Daniel, it's been an honor. Thanks. Thank you very much, Daniel. Thank you for your time. If you're looking for legit ways to make extra money, you've got to check out the Side Hustle

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