Let’s talk about the new hotel in Mérida that’s making sustainability less of a talking point and more of a spiritual practice. Literally.
We were able to sit with Antonio Cosío Pando, Grupo Brisas CEO, who told us about a brand new place that is in touch with the changing tides. Antonio spoke with a type of admiration for Las Brisas Mérida that added soul and perhaps a touch of mystery to the boutique venture.
Las Brisas Mérida, a sun-drenched collision of old colonial casona and sharp modern architecture is tucked into the city’s best neighbourhood a bit like a forest. You step into the gardens—all guayabos and dappled light—the air feels different. There are solar panels everywhere. Water treatment plants. The hotel has issued a full-scale divorce from single-use plastic. They have institutionalised sustainability.
The spiritual part? When the hotel discovered that the previous owner had taken the property’s resident alux—a protective Mayan spirit—with them, they did not shrug it off. Local workers refused to move forward without one. So the hotel called a shaman, performed a ceremony, and offered food and drink to welcome a new guardian. No irony. No marketing stunt. Just a quiet understanding that you adapt to the place, not the other way around.
What makes this feel like a real shift isn’t the solar commitment, but rather the admission that copycat models—the ones that drop the same square box into every destination—are more profitable in the short term. “But that doesn’t matter,” Antonio said. The new luxury is low-density, locally staffed, and regionally fed. Every collaboration comes from Mérida. Every peso stays in Mérida. As one of the founders put it, if you don’t leave the spillover where you land, you’re not a guest. You’re an invader. “(humans) have robbed the planet of water, of quiet, of patience. And now”, he said,” we have to give some of it back.” Spoken like a man who has seen the truth and stopped negotiating with his own industry.
To quote Antonio, “there is no going back now.” Not because sustainability is fashionable, but because this is what true luxury looks like now: arriving as a guest the land is grateful to welcome.