Mayan Riviera witnesses construction boom
CANCUN, Mexico: Mexico's Caribbean coastline is glowing, one-and-a-half years after the devastation wrought by Hurricane Wilma.
More than 120 hotels in Mexico's paradise beach resort of Cancun have been transformed into luxury inns. Along the coast, the Mayan Riviera, there are more hotels, and a new airport will soon be built near the Mayan ruins in the town of Tulum. Regional capacity is expected to rise from the current 40,000 rooms to some 100,000.
"Cancun is no longer the Cancun it used to be," says city Mayor Francisco Alor. "It is a cosmopolitan city which is still far from having shown all its advantages."
Cancun has long surpassed its older rival Acapulco, on Mexico's Pacific coast, by a good stretch. Some 800,000 people live in the city, which was mere wilderness 30 years ago, and Alor estimates that some 60,000 to 80,000 new residents arrive every year.
It is not only large hotel chains which are operating new businesses between Cancun and Chetumal, the capital of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, on the border with Belize. Luxury housing complexes are being built along the coast with its white beaches, lagoons and mangroves, as also in the inland wilderness of the Yucatan peninsula full of underground rivers, caves and Mayan cities.
And further south, in Belize, Central America, so far largely untouched by huge tourist structures - similarly large building projects are being undertaken.
An atmosphere akin to a gold rush is palpable on the coast, which due to its geographic proximity to the United States can tout itself as the southern continuation of Florida. Most tourists and homebuyers are North American.
Puerto Aventuras, not far from Playa del Carmen, around 80 kilometers south of Cancun, is an example. Until Hurricane Wilma ravaged the area it was a fairly ordinary tourist resort with hotels, a golf course and marina. Now the damage has been repaired, but not just that. "It is as if Wilma had given the resort new life," says real estate agent Isabel Sosa.
The revamp was financed by the many dollars that the wealthy of the world flaunt to have a few years in paradise. Puerta Aventuras is set to have several hotels, condominiums and houses in a luxury environment with space for yachts, a golf course, church and school. There is even a marine museum and a dolphin aquarium - a small town for 10,000 sportsmen and pensioners.
In Cancun too, the hurricane risk has not frightened off investors, but rather spurred them on. Skyscrapers of steel and concrete loom over the sand into the blue Caribbean sky - the facilities, which have to be hurricane-proof, house luxury homes geared towards rich Europeans. Prices range from 200,000 to several million dollars.
It comes as no surprise that the region is trying to crack the Russian market in the hope of luring many wealthy potential investors bound for a stay in warm climes.
Cancun businessman Rudolf Bittorf has already presented some projects in Mexico and Belize at a real estate fair in Moscow.
"The Russians are very interested," he says. "If Mexicans facilitate Russians' access to visas, the first Russians will invest in Mexico soon."
Many projects in the area seek to harmonize tourism and everyday life with nature. Tourism is expected to protect nature, not to destroy it.
Costa Rica has been a pioneer in the field for years, and now other countries in Central America and the Caribbean have also jumped onto the "sustainable tourism" bandwagon.
Small, English-speaking Belize - which lies between Quintana Roo and Guatemala - intends allowing only the construction of three large five-star hotels at the most, according to Prime Minister Said Musa. Everything else in the country's jungle, rivers, Mayan ruins and keys is to remain expensive lodges.
One large project is the Smugglers Run Plantation, near Belize City, which stands on the grounds of a former lemon plantation. "With this project we want to make Belize visible on the world map," says manager Trevor Miles, a descendant of Scottish immigrants. His family already owns the traditional Belize River Lodge, in the wilderness, on the Belize River.
DPA
(China Daily 07/12/2007 page19)
