Editor’s note: This is the third of four installments on the personalities who impacted Puerto Rico in 2024. Look for this Monday’s Figure of the Year section of Puerto Rico Hoy.

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Aguadilla - One of the most read articles in the Negocios pages this year was the scoop on the Square District project in Mayagüez, a private business initiative that seeks to reactivate tourism and commerce in the Sultana del Oeste, with an investment of more than $40 million.

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Lee este artículo en español.

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Behind this effort is Jesús Ruiz Brignoni, founder of IHP Hospitality Group, owner of the El Faro, Punta Borinquen Resort and Courtyard by Marriott hotels in Aguadilla, and the Mayagüez Plaza SureStay Collection by Best Western, among others.

This publication has selected Ruiz Brignoni as the Negocios Figure of the Year 2024.

Few entrepreneurs have the courage, consistency and determination to contribute to the socioeconomic development of the country as Ruiz Brignoni.

Without seeking prominence, but working hard and with a clear business vision, he has managed to expand the hotel offer and contribute to the creation of more than 225 direct jobs in the western zone.

Ruiz Brignoni and his company IHP -which stands for Industria Hotelera Puertorriqueña- have projects in different stages of development, from Mayagüez to San Juan. In total, IHP’s growth plan totals more than $140 million in tourism investment programmed for 2025.

Negocios spoke with the western area entrepreneur at the hotel property where it all began: El Faro, in Aguadilla.

A native of San Sebastián, Ruiz Brignoni holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Accounting from Interamerican University. He worked in public service, including 27 years in the Treasury Department, where he directed the Aguadilla and Arecibo offices, and retired in 1996.

As a young man, he planned to be an agronomist, since his father was a farmer and he was born on a farm of sugar cane, coffee, cattle and small fruits. When he entered college, a friend advised him to study accounting because he would have a better chance of getting a job, and he listened. “I wanted to graduate and start working fast so I could get married,” he recalled.

He worked at Central Plata in Sebastián, and in the Housing and Treasury departments. Eager to prosper and to have his own business, in 1977 he bought his first commercial property in Aguadilla, and set up a school and office supplies store.

His wife Bienvenida “Nany” Colón managed it, while he continued as an employee at Hacienda. Some time later, he opened Oficentro Express in Mayagüez.

With the arrival of the megastores, the hotelier thought that school supply stores like his would face difficulties, so he analyzed the opportunities and decided to enter the tourism sector.

“In Aguadilla, there was a need for a hotel, there was only the Montemar. I passed by Highway 107 and saw a lot with a For Sale sign. It was a ravine, but when you went down, it was a plain, and there I saw a hotel”.

“To start a business, you have to have vision, faith, courage and hard work,” he said, noting that on that site he established his first hotel: El Faro, the genesis of what is today IHP Hospitality Group.

The businessman invested all his savings in the purchase of the land and the Central Bank lent him $840,000 for the construction of the hotel.

“In a year and a half we built the property, before there were not the problems we have today with permits, they were approved in the district,” said the interviewee. El Faro opened with 32 rooms, swimming pool, a small restaurant and activity room.

The hotel was instantly well received and was full year-round. “It was a 936″ hotel, said its owner, referring to the guests, who were mostly pharmaceutical executives operating on the island under section 936 of the federal Internal Revenue Code. Soon after, he added a second 20-room building.

It was his son Eric, who recommended that he establish hotels in other areas of the island. After pondering the idea, he bought the property of the Spanish consulate in Condado, remodeled it and in 1996, opened the 31-room El Consulado hotel. “That was the biggest success in the world. The hotel was full of tourists all the time.”

Since then, he got the backing of the bank, as he more than proved that his company was profitable and well managed. The trajectory allowed him to multiply his investments and continue to shape the vision of a former public servant turned hotelier. Among other properties, he bought the former Casa Parroquial in Mayagüez, located in the urban center of the city, and converted it into what is today the Mayagüez Plaza Hotel.

In addition, he established another hotel in Villa del Ojo de Agua, despite the fact that the El Faro hotel was already operating there. “Aguadilla needed a franchise hotel with a casino,” Ruiz Brignoni explained, offering details of the analysis he made to establish the Courtyard by Marriott, with 150 rooms, in the former Ramey Base hospital.

In those years, Ruiz Brignoni set a more ambitious goal. “I set out to be the first purely Puerto Rican hotel chain,” he said.

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, he visualized the opportunity to acquire several buildings that had been emblematic in Mayagüez, but had been abandoned for decades. “They were buildings that were near the Mayagüez Plaza Hotel in the urban center and I understood that they could be grouped together to make a commercial tourist district.”

The ambitious project in the Sultana del Oeste - to be known as the Square District - will combine entertainment, gastronomy and business activity - and should begin construction in early 2025, according to the businessman. He estimated that it will take two years to be completed.

Next year, it will also build a new hotel in Condado, since El Consulado became too small. His new hotel in the Puerto Rican capital will have 124 rooms. For the time being, IHP reserved the flag that the property will bear and the specific details of the project.

Despite IHP’s deep-rooted roots and the tens of thousands of tourists who have vacationed, worked or enjoyed events at the company’s lodgings, anyone who doesn’t know him wouldn’t know who Ruiz Brignoni is, nicknamed “Chú” by those close to him.

Of simple manners and affable manner, Ruiz Brignoni recognizes that “I like to think big”. Among his dreams, he envisions developing several hotels near Puerto Rico’s main thoroughfares, appealing to guests with a practical travel schedule. The first of these he plans to build in Arecibo. There, the man already bought the land more than a decade ago.

“The Arecibo commercial tourism project has been held up by a lawsuit from a competitor and now, by permits. But we are positive that in 2025 we will be able to launch the new concept,” he said. He said he modified the original idea to compromise the lawsuit and be able to build the hotel.

The founder of IHP is meticulous in his analysis, and knows how to listen, even to people that others would not take into account. He says that some of the ideas implemented in IHP hotels have come from employees, clients and even little children. It was precisely a child who, many years ago, suggested to him the place where he should build the swimming pool at the El Faro hotel.

Negocios asked him what advice he would give to anyone contemplating entrepreneurship, just as he did 50 years ago.

“Anyone who wants to make money should think of three things: they have to save, not spend the chavos on luxuries; they have to work tirelessly; and reinvest in the company,” Ruiz Brignoni said.

He opined that many Puerto Ricans are afraid to invest in business, but he asserted that if the person is perseverant and follows this advice, he or she will do well. “If you are smart, you look to the future, and you know what is good and what is bad, time teaches you. Things speak, opportunities are there and they will come to you.”

“Puerto Rico is the best country in the world, and I have visited many of them. Why do you think so many Americans come here to invest? Because it’s a good place to invest, that’s why I invest everything in business,” said the founder of IHP.

Ruiz Brignoni works with his family. His eldest son, Néstor, is the president of IHP, and his granddaughter - Claire Marie Ruiz - is the chief financial officer. His second son, Eric, studied tourism and owns another hotel in Mayagüez.

Ruiz Brignoni feels satisfied with what he has achieved at the family and business level. As for turning IHP into the first purely Puerto Rican hotel chain, he said that continues to be the family clan’s goal. “If I don’t achieve it, my children are going to achieve it because they think the same way I do,” he said.

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This content was translated from Spanish to English using artificial intelligence and was reviewed by an editor before being published.