Who We Are:

The Cabo Investors Forum was the brainchild of Mr. Arnoldo Coronado.  With the 2020 Covid Lockdown in full force, the municipality of Cabo San Lucas used the opportunity created by the pause in global tourism to retrofit, repair, clean and grow their infrastructure and commercial base.  Literally! This resulted in one more example of the resilience and forward-thinking Arnoldo had only heard of in passing when people spoke about Cabo…will get back to that later. Whether by design or serendipity, instead of fussing over the lack in tourism, Cabo took the opportunity to grow and revamp their infrastructure and commercial investment so much so that during the by the time Covid restrictions lifted to allow for limited occupancy, many hotels and restaurants ended up at nearly full pre-Covid capacity. This was because, you guessed it, they doubled their capacity so the new half, was their old “full.”

Arnoldo has since called this the “Choyero Mindset.” Allow me to provide some context. Baja’s most famous tourist destination is sensitive to earthquakes and hurricanes.  They get hit by powerful storms every year and hurricane level events every other year. When the storms are not trying their best levelling anything you build, the Baja California Desert is a cruel landscape of cacti, “choyas” sand and rocks. The “Choyeros” as the locals call themselves, learned to scrape out a living from this harsh environment, so storms and hurricanes for them are just a sprinkle of excitement and cool showers.

When the tourist flow halted, Cabo got to work. Arnoldo, being a Civil Engineer with experience in government and the private sector, helped in his capacity.  Mainly, he took the opportunity to learn from the “Choyeros” everything he could about their mind set. He decided to see what made them tick.  What could have been an economic loss was instead used as an opportunity to focus on the safety of Cabo’s long-term growth and lay the foundation for the city’s future as an economic hub and not merely a tourist destination.

Impressed by the good governance and economic foresight he observed in Cabo, Arnoldo’s Covid Cabo assignment turned into a master class in the State of Baja Sur.  Indeed, Cabo’s potential was not a fluke.  The state capital of La Paz and lesser-known communities of Todos Santos, Loreto, Mulege and Santa Rosalia all followed more or less the same logic. Arnoldo, trained as a Civil Engineer in the high energy and bustling chaos of Tijuana, found that Baja Sur was a laboratory of organic, smart, sustainable development waiting to impress the world.

Seeking a US perspective on what he saw as an opportunity in plain sight, Arnoldo reached out to a former colleague in the Hospitality Industry.  Mr. Darren Renna is a third-generation family businessman from San Diego California.  Having grown up with real estate development and the Food & Beverage sector, Darren had been consulting for hotels, night clubs and importers.  By this time Darren had consulted on projects involving the US, Mexico, Honduras, The Dominican Republic, Brazil, Malta, Poland, Bahrain, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Cambodia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. 

Having met Darren while investigating a possible hotel renovation in Ensenada, Arnoldo had a colleague that could interpret his findings through an international lens.  Once travel was allowed, Darren’s first flight was to Cabo.  From there, the two future partners drove the length of the Baja Peninsula, from Cabo back to San Diego.  Local economies were explored and potential opportunities and development sites were analyzed.

Thus was born the Cabo Investor Forum.  What started as an epiphany that Cabo had the potential to become a model of smart development and multifaceted economic growth very quickly took on a life of its own.  Experts from other sectors were recruited and promising locations in other parts of Mexico such as Monterey, Yucatan and Oaxaca have been added to the roster of opportunities the Cabo Investor Forum can offer.  Born from the worldwide disruption of Covid, the Cabo Investor Forum has strategically positioned itself as the premier guide to accessing the best Mexico has to offer in a rapidly changing world. 

However, just wanting to have a business is not enough.  Knowing in what sector and where you want build your business is not enough.  Having the funds to buy into a market and a great team of experts along for the ride helps, but that is still not enough. You need to actually create the right framework of adaptability and expertise to ensure success.  You need the “Choyero Mindset.” So what the Cabo Investors Forum truly provides is a space where we grow, share and expand this mindset amongst all of our members. Key factors such as foresight, resilience, risk management and opportunity are more than just bullet points they are a way of thinking, and thoughts have to be expressed analyzed and discussed. That is what this forum is about.