Moving from company to company is not unusual in hospitality—in fact, remaining with one business for more than a few years is much more the exception than the rule. But Juan Corvinos Solans ignored that tradition, working with Hilton for more than 16 years and becoming senior vice president of development, architecture, design & construction for Latin America and the Caribbean.
But nothing lasts forever, and in April, Corvinos stepped away from Hilton to take on a new role at Hotel Equities as president of the management and development company’s Caribbean & Latin America division.
A Passion for Hospitality
Corvinos grew up in Zaragoza, Spain, and spent his summers bartending in a beach kiosk in Salou, Tarragona. His passion, he recalled, was for catering and bartending, but at his family’s insistence he went to the University of Navarra to study law and business. At the time, he said, hospitality was not a degree-level career field in Spanish universities despite tourism and hospitality making up a significant portion of the country’s gross domestic product. When his family realized that studying law was not making him happy, they encouraged him to follow his passion in the Escuela Superior de Hosteleria de Sevilla while continuing his legal studies at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia.
The dual programs served him well, he noted, as he both learned about the nuances of hospitality and customer service from one side and contract development from the other. “My hospitality background was only accretive—and, actually, a sidebar to what I ended up doing,” he said. “I spent 15 years doing development, and that's contracts as economic terms. That's basically understanding markets and dynamics. I never relegated or shunned that side. I was always cognizant that I was going to be doing that.”
Warmth and Light
At 20 years old, Corvinos joined the team at Hilton, working as an intern in the human resources division at the dual-branded Hilton Kuala Lumpur. From there, he returned to Europe as the intern for the director of development for the Iberian Peninsula and worked with Carlos Miro, today Hilton’s managing director for development in Spain & Portugal, who Corvinos calls “one of the big supporters of my career.” Miro, he recalled, taught the aspiring hotelier “everything about development—how to qualify owners, what was a good deal and a bad deal, the structures, leases. … He's an expert in leases and franchise agreements and management agreements, and I learned a lot from him.” Significantly, Miro encouraged Corvinos to try other roles and “do bigger and better things.”
With that advice in mind, Corvinos moved to London to join Hilton’s Europe & Africa development team and spent the next two and a half years learning about how the business operated and what owners across the region needed. Coming to visit the company’s headquarters in McLean, Va., he expected to only be in town for a month or two—but an unexpected opening drew him to the company’s Latin America market, where he saw “a lot of opportunity” for growth and development.
When he started as director of development for the Andean region, Hilton had 35 hotels open across the zone. Thirteen years later, the company had 285 open hotels and another 115 in the pipeline. Over those 13 years, Corvinos took on new roles and new responsibilities, launching major brand platforms such as All-Inclusive by Hilton, Waldorf Astoria, Conrad, LXR, Curio, Canopy and Tapestry.
Next Steps and New Successes
By early 2025, Corvinos had been Hilton’s SVP development, architecture, design and construction, Latin America & Caribbean, for more than three years. He had spent more than 16 years in total with the company and was ready for the next step. Taking a break to determine his future, he consulted with Hotel Equities, and ultimately was offered a position within the company.
Corvinos was attracted to the company by the opportunities it presented, especially following Hotel Equities’ merger with Springboard Hospitality in May. With his experience in the region to guide him, Corvinos will look to build a management infrastructure that works specifically for the CALA region. “The whole team is really, really driven to make sure that this is a big success,” he said.
That success, he continued, will be evident in profitability for the owners who partner with Hotel Equities. “And then if you maintain exquisite owner relations with them, and they repeat business with you, that's nirvana.”
Ultimately, Corvinos feels that his career has been a success because of “many, many other people that have taught me how not to do it—or how it can be done better.”
Hotel Equities
Headquarters: Alpharetta, Ga.
Structure: Management and development
Portfolio: 8 Caribbean and Latin America hotels with 916 guestrooms
Website: HotelEquities.com
This article was originally published in the July/August edition of Hotel Management magazine. Subscribe here.