Not a member yet? Click here to join CHTA.
National Hotel and Tourism Association
Antiqua aruba Bahamas_Hotel_TourismAssociation Barbados belize bermuda bonaire BritishVirginIslands Caymans Curacao Dominica DominicanaRepublica Grenada Guadalupe Guyana Haiti jamaica Martinique Mexico_Cancun PuertoRico StBarthelemy StKitts_Nevis StLucia StMaarten StMartin StVincent_Grenadians Suriname Tobago Trinidad Turks&Caicos USVI

José Antonio Rivera Campo

Four Decades Committed to Tourism

José Antonio Rivera Campo, Hotelier, born in Mexico City who right after concluding his studies in Lasallian schools moved to England for a period of a year in order to improve and perfect his English language studies. A year later, he changes his place of residence to France where he became involved in French Civilization studies at Collège de Sorbonne in Paris.

In 1975 he completes his professional studies at the Glion Institute of Higher Education in Swiss, where he receives the “Hoteliére Diplomé” degree.

During his studies in Swiss, José A. Rivera carried out his professional kitchen skills training in the prestigious Hotel Des Berges (currently Four Seasons) in Geneve, as well as his professional administration training at Hôtel Plaza Athénée in Paris, France.

On his return to Mexico, José A. Rivera works at the Le Chateu and Kloster restaurants for a period of a year and later on he is incorporated with the Camino Real/Westin Mexico hotel chain, where he developed as Cost Analyst and 16 years later achieves a Director of Operations position, being in charge of 16 hotels all over Mexico and Central America.

During his stay in the Camino Real/Westin Mexico hotel chain, José A. Rivera achieved several positions as Food & Beverage Manager at Las Brisas Hotel in Acapulco, El Alameda Hotel in Mexico City and Camino Real Hotels in Puerto Vallarta and Ixtapa.

While working for Camino Real in Ixtapa, is where José A. Rivera reaches his higher achievements as Hotelier. He is promoted from Food & Beverage Manager to Resident Manager and later on to General Manager, finally he is promoted to General Manager for the Camino Real Hotel in Cancún, which was his last position before undertaking a Director of Operations position for Mexico and Latin America in this hotel chain.

In 1993, José A. Rivera accepts a General Director position for the Touristic Group Escorpión, owners of several hotels such as Ritz Carlton Cancún, Holiday Inn Express, La Joya de Mismaloya in Puerto Vallarta, Malibu in Acapulco and different touristic developments established in Mexico and Costa Rica.

In 1999, José A. Rivera accepts and invitation to once again become part of the Camino Real/Westin Mexico hotel chain; this time he returns as General Manager for the Camino Real Hotel in Mexico City, such hotel recognized as a member of “The Leading Hotels of the World” organization, where he prevailed during 3 years, preparing this hotel for its successful sale to the Vazquez Raña family.

In early 2002, he is incorporated in Grupo CIE in charge of directing the opening of the Convention and Exposition Center of the Las Américas Racetrack, best known as the Banamex Center.

Later in time and after collaborating as General Coordinator in Grupo Autofin for the creation of a project known as Mansión Imperial in Acapulco, José A. Rivera accepts Alex Zozaya´s invitation in 2004, to collaborate in the newly founded AMRESORTS Hotel Group, filling up the Development & New Projects Director position and further on in 2012, promoted as Vice President of Development for AMRESORTS, a fundamental piece for Apple Leisure Group, where he also executes a position as Vice President of Developments & New Projects.

In those years, AMRESORTS had the Secrets and Sunscape trademarks positioned in the Mayan Riviera and Dominican Republic; the before mentioned hotel group, additionally acquired the Camino Real Hotels in Cancún and Puerto Vallarta and at the same time began operating a hotel in Los Cabos in order to develop the Dreams trademark, which represented new and defying challenges for José A. Rivera as Vice President of Development for AMRESORTS.

Nowadays, after being part of AMRESORTS for over 11 years, which now has under its command 38 operating resorts divided under its 6 trademarks: Zoetry, Secrets, Dreams, Breathless and Sunscape; represented in 8 different countries (Mexico, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Curacao, Panama, Aruba, United States Virgin Islands and Costa Rica) in addition to 6 resorts under current construction.

Pepe Rivera a he is commonly known to everyone in the hotel and touristic industry of Mexico, ——where he celebrates his 40th anniversary of absolute dedication and professional compromise on the development and progress of the before mentioned industry—— is still loyally working and firmly convinced of his own philosophy: “In order to provoke any change, it has to be worked up from the inside and not only by external criticism”.

As President of the Hotel Association of Ixtapa, Zihuatanejo, Pepe Rivera achieves the difficult task of unifying these two touristic destinations in a same group.

As President of the Hotel Association of Cancún, he designs and implements a mixed funds scheme in order to support the development of touristic activities in the city.

As Vice President of the Hotel Chains Association, Pepe Rivera drafts an analytic document which offered then, a study of great vision regarding the hotel activity situation in Mexico now then.

José A. Rivera has also served as President of the Promotion Committee of Cancún, position from where he achieved to establish the guidelines and strategies which currently situate this important touristic pole under the higher occupation levels in its history.

Presently, Jose A. Rivera serves as Regional Vice President of the Hotel Association of the Caribbean, where he is currently working on affiliating several Caribbean destinations, as well as bringing CHTA to Cancún.

In the social area, Pepe Rivera founded the European Hotelier Schools Former Students Association in which he serves as Honorary and Life President, as well as Bailli Honoraire and Comandeur de la Chaine des Rotisseurs among several other affiliations.

In addition, the hotel industry has recognized our friend Pepe Rivera in several occasions obtaining important awards such as the one granted by AMAIT (Abastecedores Turísticos, A.C./Touristic Suppliers Association), the Llave del Progreso Award in 2013 (Progress Key Award) (on the Hotelier of the Year category in Mexico City) and the MKG Group World Awards as an awarded finalist on Lifetime Worldwide Achievement “Iconic Employee” in 2014 in Paris, France.

Arthur Bornman defines tourism as: “A set of trips for pleasure or for business or professional reasons and the like, in which the absence of habitual residence is temporary”. Our candidate, Pepe Rivera, has achieved to define an opposite concept to Bornman´s based on his hotel and touristic professional career: “To transform pleasure, commercial and professional trips and temporary stays into a true habitual residence”.

With this 40 years brief biography of impeccable professional experience in the hotel industry, we present you José Antonio Rivera Campo´s nomination to the Excellence Award for the project:

“Four Decades Committed to Tourism”.