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Cancun: An affordable, quiet utopia
By Virginia Linn, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Imagine taking a trip to one of the hottest vacation spots in the Caribbean and having your choice of any lounge chair on the beach, no matter the time of day.
You can get the best table at a restaurant without a reservation during the peak dinner hour. An empty elevator is always waiting on your floor. And if you want to take a popular day tour, you can book it in the late afternoon the previous day without any problems. That is Cancun. Now.
Faced with a triple whammy of bad luck — the deepest economic slump in decades, a major outbreak of swine flu on the mainland and chilling accounts of drug violence along some border towns — Mexico's $13.2 billion tourist trade has been hit harder than the force of a Category 4 hurricane. In few places is this more evident than along the Riviera Maya, the eastern coast of the Yucatan peninsula, where hotel capacity averaged just 36 percent last week, according to statistics tracked by the local newspaper. In Cancun, capacity in its hotel zone, a 121/2-mile strip of beachfront hotels and condos, ranged from 54 percent to 63 percent. >>>>Go to Full Story >>>