1 · POSITION
Leo Ghitis belongs in the Luxury Hospitality Library as the owner-creator who helped turn Nayara from a modest Arenal hotel into one of Latin America's most distinctive nature-led luxury resort collections. His authorship lies in combining high-end hospitality with reforestation, privacy, low-density development and an insistence that extraordinary natural settings should become more ecologically valuable through tourism rather than less.
2 · THE CORRECT LHL ROLE
Group II — Owner-Creators. The current PEOPLE TO WRITE file gives P-201 no anchor or country. Research resolves both: Ghitis was born in Cali, Colombia, is long based in Miami, and his hospitality authorship is anchored to Nayara Resorts, originating in Arenal, Costa Rica. LHL should create or assign the Nayara Resorts brand/House anchor before publication.
3 · 1958 - COLOMBIA
Industry biography material identifies Ghitis as born in Colombia in 1958; recent Costa Rican reporting specifies Cali.
4 · UNITED STATES
He moved to the United States at age 17.
5 · ENGINEERING AND HARVARD
Ghitis studied engineering at Georgia Tech and later earned an MBA from Harvard Business School.
6 · REAL ESTATE BEFORE HOSPITALITY
His professional background was commercial real estate rather than hotels. He became a senior partner at Trammell Crow Company responsible for South Florida and later founded Ghitis Property Company.
7 · THE MID-CAREER TURN
Ghitis has described hospitality as a mid-career pivot from conventional real estate development toward work he felt could create more meaningful environmental and social value.
8 · COSTA RICA
A family trip to Costa Rica became the emotional catalyst. Recent reporting quotes Ghitis describing the country as love at first sight.
9 · ARENAL
The hospitality story centres on the Arenal Volcano region, where a small existing hotel became the seed of Nayara.
10 · NOT THE SOLITARY FOUNDER
Recent Costa Rican reporting says Ghitis joined the project as a partner several years after first discovering Costa Rica. LHL should therefore avoid a solitary-founder myth and describe him as partner/co-founder and the principal owner-creator behind Nayara's luxury expansion.
11 · 2006 - EARLY NAYARA
El Financiero reports that the project began operating in its formative phase in 2006 with 28 employees and rates around $60.
12 · SMALL HOTEL TO LUXURY PLATFORM
Ghitis later recalled becoming involved with a small three-star hotel of roughly two dozen rooms in Arenal before transforming the concept toward five-star nature hospitality.
13 · REPOSITIONING
The strategic move was not simply to renovate rooms. Ghitis repositioned the property around privacy, rainforest, service, wellness and a stronger sense of place.
14 · NAYARA GARDENS
Nayara Gardens became the family-friendly foundation of the Arenal cluster.
15 · NAYARA SPRINGS
Nayara Springs extended the model into adults-only ultra-luxury, with private villas and hot-spring pools.
16 · NAYARA TENTED CAMP
Nayara Tented Camp became Ghitis's clearest authored House and the strongest recommended anchor for P-201.
17 · AFRICAN INSPIRATION
Ghitis was inspired by high-end tented safari lodges he had seen in Africa and Asia and wanted to translate that experiential typology into Costa Rica.
18 · LUXURY FRONTIERS
Luxury Frontiers developed the Tented Camp design in collaboration with Nayara; Ghitis is quoted as owner and originator of the concept.
19 · CENTRAL AMERICAN TENTED LUXURY
When announced for its 2019 opening, Nayara Tented Camp was positioned as one of Central America's first luxury tented camps.
20 · SENSE OF PLACE
Ghitis explicitly stressed that every design element should create a genuine sense of place rather than reproduce African safari aesthetics literally.
21 · RAINFOREST RESTORATION
The most important part of the Tented Camp story is that the landscape itself had been badly degraded by cattle ranching and dairy production.
22 · REWILDING
Ghitis and the Nayara team undertook a long-term reforestation effort to rebuild native rainforest rather than landscape the property primarily with ornamental vegetation.
23 · THE MOUNTAIN COMES BACK
Travel Weekly's 2024 account records Ghitis describing a site where initially there were virtually no birds or butterflies; the rewilding programme sought to restore the ecological conditions for wildlife to return.
24 · HOSPITALITY AS RESTORATION CAPITAL
This makes Nayara more than a resort placed inside attractive nature. Tourism revenue helped finance the return of the nature guests came to experience.
25 · SLOTH SANCTUARY EFFECT
The restored forest became associated with returning wildlife, including sloths, reinforcing the feedback loop between habitat restoration and guest experience.
26 · LOW-IMPACT, HIGH-YIELD
Nayara Tented Camp was explicitly developed around a low-impact, high-yield concept: fewer, high-value accommodations integrated into landscape.
27 · PRIVACY
Ghitis identifies space and privacy as central expectations of modern luxury guests.
28 · SUSTAINABILITY AND LUXURY TOGETHER
His central hospitality thesis is that sustainability should not require compromising service, comfort or experiential richness.
29 · LUXURY IS IN THE DETAILS
In discussing Tented Camp, Ghitis emphasised detailed execution rather than sustainability as a substitute for luxury.
30 · NATURE AS THE MAIN AMENITY
At Nayara, the rainforest, volcano, hot springs and wildlife are not background assets. They are the primary luxury environment.
31 · THE RESORT CLUSTER
The three Arenal properties are connected by pathways and bridges, allowing differentiated hotel identities to share a broader landscape and amenity ecosystem.
32 · FROM COSTA RICA TO CHILE
Nayara later expanded beyond Costa Rica, including properties in Chile's Atacama Desert and on Easter Island/Rapa Nui.
33 · NAYARA ALTO ATACAMA
The Atacama expansion translated the same principle into a radically different ecosystem: desert landscape rather than rainforest.
34 · NAYARA HANGAROA
Rapa Nui extended the brand into a culturally sensitive island destination where architecture and hospitality must negotiate with an exceptional heritage landscape.
35 · PANAMA
Nayara also expanded into Panama, including an island hospitality expression with overwater accommodation.
36 · ONE BRAND, DIFFERENT ECOSYSTEMS
The expansion demonstrates that Nayara is not based on copying one physical resort template. The recurring element is immersion in distinctive nature and place.
37 · REGENERATIVE TOURISM
Ghitis increasingly describes Nayara through sustainable and regenerative tourism rather than conventional eco-resort language.
38 · FROM PROTECTING TO IMPROVING
Regenerative hospitality asks whether tourism can leave the ecological and social system stronger, not merely reduce damage.
39 · STAFF AND HOUSING
Nayara's more recent social-impact work includes attention to employee welfare and housing, expanding the sustainability discussion beyond wildlife and energy.
40 · HUMAN-FOCUSED HOSPITALITY
Ghitis's public comments increasingly connect guest experience with employee wellbeing and local social conditions.
41 · CORPORATE STRUCTURE
Legal filings in the United States describe Nayara's Costa Rican hotels and related entities as operating as a corporate group under common ultimate ownership structures. LHL need not reproduce that legal architecture in the editorial card, but it confirms Ghitis's role as CEO/owner across the operating group.
42 · CEO AND CO-FOUNDER
Current industry biographies identify Ghitis as CEO and co-founder of Nayara Resorts.
43 · COLOMBIAN-BORN, MIAMI-BASED, COSTA RICAN HOSPITALITY AUTHOR
This three-geography biography resolves the country ambiguity in the backlog: born in Colombia, based in the United States, hospitality authorship principally created in Costa Rica.
44 · WHY GROUP II
Owner-Creators is the correct category because Ghitis did more than finance hotels. He drove the luxury repositioning, landscape-restoration philosophy, Tented Camp concept and international expansion.
45 · COMPARISON WITH JOSÉ KOECHLIN
Koechlin's conservation model is science-heavy and institutionally linked to long-term biodiversity inventories. Ghitis's distinctive contribution is rewilding degraded land while building a highly marketable luxury resort experience around the recovered ecosystem.
46 · COMPARISON WITH COLIN BELL
Bell uses safari economics to protect wilderness at landscape scale. Ghitis demonstrates a complementary case: hospitality can actively rebuild an ecosystem that had already been damaged.
47 · COMPARISON WITH RICHARD BAILEY
Bailey emphasises island infrastructure and marine science; Ghitis emphasises land restoration, nature immersion and the replication of regenerative luxury across contrasting Latin American ecosystems.
48 · THE LUXURY TENTED CAMP AS TRANSLATION
Ghitis did not simply import the African safari tent. He translated the typology into rainforest, volcano, hot springs and Costa Rican ecology.
49 · ARCHITECTURE AND ECOLOGY
The Tented Camp works because the architectural idea and restoration programme reinforce each other: elevated, low-density accommodation makes the forest the dominant visual field.
50 · THE BRAND'S COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
Nayara's environmental work is not separate from commercial positioning. The restored rainforest makes the hotel more beautiful, private, biodiverse and difficult to imitate.
51 · WHAT HE CHANGED
LEO GHITIS HELPED TURN REWILDING INTO A LUXURY-HOSPITALITY PRODUCT — SHOWING THAT RESTORING A DAMAGED RAINFOREST COULD INCREASE BOTH ECOLOGICAL VALUE AND THE GUEST'S SENSE OF PRIVACY, BEAUTY AND EXCLUSIVITY.
52 · HOSPITALITY LESSON
The best nature resort does not merely preserve the view from the room. It invests in the ecological system that makes the view worth travelling for.
53 · STRATEGIC LESSON
Regenerative tourism becomes commercially powerful when environmental improvement produces a visibly better guest experience rather than remaining an invisible compliance exercise.
54 · RECOMMENDED LHL ANCHORS
Create or assign a Nayara Resorts brand anchor. At House level, use Nayara Tented Camp as the strongest authored anchor, with Nayara Springs and Nayara Gardens as the Arenal origin cluster. Add Alto Atacama, Hangaroa and Panama properties as expansion context where LHL records exist.
55 · TIMELINE
1958 · born in Colombia. Age 17 · moves to the United States. Later · studies engineering at Georgia Tech and earns an MBA at Harvard. Real-estate career · senior partner at Trammell Crow Company and founder of Ghitis Property Company. 2000s · becomes involved in the Arenal hotel project that evolves into Nayara Resorts. 2006 · early Nayara operation documented with 28 employees and modest rates. 2010s · Nayara Gardens and Nayara Springs establish the luxury Arenal cluster. 2019/2020 · Nayara Tented Camp debuts. Early 2020s · portfolio expands into Chile and Panama. 2020s · Ghitis increasingly advocates regenerative tourism and social-impact hospitality.
56 · STORY BANK — THERE WERE NO BUTTERFLIES
Ghitis recalls acquiring degraded cattle land where virtually no wildlife remained. The resort's team had to source native rainforest species and rebuild habitat. The eventual return of birds, butterflies and sloths became both conservation result and luxury amenity.
57 · STORY BANK — THE SAFARI TENT CROSSES AN OCEAN
Ghitis saw luxury tented camps in Africa and Asia and asked whether the idea could work under Arenal Volcano. The answer was not a copy: hot springs, rainforest and Costa Rican design transformed the typology into something geographically specific.
58 · STORY BANK — FROM $60 TO ULTRA-LUXURY
Recent Costa Rican reporting recalls an early operation charging around $60 with 28 employees. The same hospitality platform later produced rooms and tents selling at many multiples of that rate. The value creation came from service, privacy, design and restoration of place rather than scale alone.
59 · LEGACY
Ghitis's hospitality legacy is the conversion of ecological restoration into luxury value. Nayara demonstrates that a resort can make damaged land more desirable by making it more alive.
60 · EDITORIAL NOTE
P-201 had no country or anchor in the current PEOPLE TO WRITE file. Research resolves the biography as Colombian-born, U.S.-based and principally a Costa Rica hospitality author. Before publication, assign a formal LHL brand or House code to Nayara Resorts/Nayara Tented Camp. Do not describe Ghitis as the sole original founder of the earliest Arenal hotel; current Costa Rican reporting says he joined an existing founding project as partner and became pivotal to its luxury transformation. ## Sources & Further Reading
61 · [NAYARA RESORTS · OFFICIAL SITE](HTTPS://NAYARARESORTS.COM/)
2. [Luxury Frontiers · Nayara Tented Camp](https://www.luxury-frontiers.com/project/nayara-tented-camp) 3. [Luxury Frontiers · Nayara Tented Camp Debut](https://www.luxury-frontiers.com/post/nayara-tented-camp-in-costa-rica-to-debut-on-december-20-2019) 4. [El Financiero Costa Rica · Historia de Nayara Resorts](https://www.elfinancierocr.com/negocios/como-nacio-la-primera-cadena-hotelera-de-lujo-de/5CLZCEQZORA6DEBY36FQGWNK2I/story/) 5. [Travel Weekly · Rewilding Takes Root](https://www.travelweekly.com/Travel-News/Hotel-News/Focus-on-Hotels-2024-Rewilding-takes-root)
62 · [SAHIC · LEO GHITIS BIOGRAPHY](HTTPS://WWW.SAHIC.COM/LEO-GHITIS)
7. [South Florida Business & Wealth · Leo Ghitis and Nayara](https://sfbwmag.com/how-nayara-resorts-owner-leo-ghitis-implemented-his-vision-without-compromise/) 8. [Travel Weekly · Consumer Editors Roundtable with Leo Ghitis](https://www.travelweekly.com/Agent-Issues/Consumer-Travel-Editors-Roundtable-2023/355181)