A programmed beach resort north of Cartagena.

The Delano Cartagena development programme is defined rather than notional: 50 hotel rooms, 136 condo-hotel rooms and 25 casitas, supported by a 140-seat café, a 160-seat restaurant, a rooftop bar and 5,400 square feet of meeting space.

That mix matters. The condo-hotel component gives a developer a pre-sale funding path that a pure-key hotel does not, while the meeting space and food and beverage programme support mid-week occupancy in a market that is otherwise heavily leisure-weighted.

The project sits 28 kilometres north of Cartagena on the Autopista al Mar toward Barranquilla, 25 minutes from Rafael Núñez Cartagena International Airport, in tropical mangrove terrain beside the Caribbean Sea.

Delano sits within the same coastal corridor as Mar de Indias and benefits from the same access, airport proximity and beach frontage. For a buyer, the two can be read as alternatives at very different capital scales — 12 acres and US$4.9M against 675 acres and US$89M — or as complementary positions in one corridor.

Cartagena is Colombia's principal international leisure market, with a UNESCO walled city, direct North American and European lift, and a hotel stock that skews either historic-boutique inside the walls or dated resort outside them. A new-build beach resort with a defined programme addresses a genuine gap.