Mexico will soon get a jolt of some serious energy as the Las Vegas-based hospitality company, Hakkasan Group has recently partnered with Grupo Vidanta to bring an assortment of dining and entertainment venues to some of the top destination cities in Mexico. As one of Mexico’s biggest resort operators and tourism developers, Grupo Vidanta is no foreigner to entertainment ventures. In 2015 its Grand Mayan Riviera Maya Resort debuted JOYÁ by Cirque du Soleil, a massively popular dining and entertainment experience. The success of JOYÁ opened the doors to their recent announcement of a Cirque du Soleil Theme Park, set to open in Nuevo Vallarta in 2018. The billion-dollar theme park is still in development, but it will include three in-park resort hotels, each themed and a full Cirque du Soleil show and water experience, accommodating anywhere between 3,000 and 5,000 spectators.
Cirque Du Soleil Theater at Vidanta Riviera Maya
Before the colorfully entertaining park opens, Grupo Vidanta will focus its efforts with Hakkasan Group. The partnership is investing $150 million in new beach clubs, nightlife venues, restaurants and a new hotel. “There is a huge demand for successful global lifestyle brands in Mexico, and we thought Hakkasan Group would take beach destinations to another level of entertainment,” says Iván Chávez, executive vice president of Grupo Vidanta. “A pool and a beach are no longer enough to compete worldwide. Tourists to Mexico are looking for the world’s top-quality entertainment experiences presented in a local flavor, and that is exactly what we intend to deliver.”
The location of their first project will be at the Grand Mayan Los Cabos in San Jose del Cabo, where an Omnia dayclub is in the works. “This isn’t that sleepy, relaxed dayclub in Cabo. We’ve arranged this to be a programmed, energetic venue.” The dayclub will strive for a Vegas-like atmosphere, with an extravagant daytime experience that shifts into a club-restaurant-cabaret when the sun goes down. “The idea is that we [have] you at 11 a.m. and we don’t want to let you go until 4 a.m. the next morning,” says Nick McCabe, Hakkasan Group President. The Cabo project will also include Herringbone, a restaurant with a coastal vibe and a Mexican twist, and another restaurant that will be a venture with H. Wood Group that operates other hotspots like Bootsy Bellows in Los Angeles and Heart of Omnia at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. The Cabo projects are set to open in the second-half of 2017.
Omnia Los Cabos Beach Club
In addition to Cabo, other cities will also get the Hakkasan treatment. Over the course of five years Hakkasan will introduce a new venue at a different Vidanta property each year. It will also introduce a brand new hotel. Other Vidanta properties can be found in Nuevo Vallarta, Riviera Maya, Acapulco, Puerto Peñasco, Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlán but McCabe is not set to say which city is next, “We want to get it right, and then we’ll look at the next step,” he says.