High Tourism Demand Straining the Riviera Maya

The Castillo, a Maya building at Tulum from around 1200 AD, has withstood gale-force winds from more than a thousand hurricanes. Just to the north, the modern structures of Cancun have not done as well. In 2005, just over 30 years after the city’s construction, Hurricane Wilma destroyed more than 90 percent of some beach areas in Cancun. It also dragged a boat more than 320 feet inland and left major beachfront hotels looking like something out of an apocalypse movie.

How do ancient Maya ruins hold up better than steel and concrete? The answer is connected to the desires of Cancun’s tourists.

Privacy and Amenities

It seems like everyone hates Cancun these days. In the local Cancun ‘zine Tropo a la uña, one author called the city one of the few truly “Mexican” cities because it doesn’t have a plaza with a church and Spanish admin building in the center. That feature is a deal breaker for the contemporary tourist that seeks “authentic” experiences “off the beaten path”. I like Cancun, and in my experience, there are worse places to spend a Saturday afternoon.

Still, there are some rotten things about Cancun, and I don’t mean the “authentic” shrimp tacos. The biggest problem is poverty in downtown Cancun, something you might never have noticed if you only hung out on Avenida Kukulcan. This is no accident. Cancun was built so you wouldn’t notice the poverty of the working-class neighborhoods occupied by over half a million residents.

According to Rebecca Torres and Janet Momsen, when investors financed Cancun in the 1970s, tourism was petering off in rival beach city Acapulco for one major reason: Tourists could see the poor people’s houses. See, we want a certain feeling while on vacation. We want our space. We want our privacy. We want the opportunity to get lost in our own world with nothing but the sound of waves and the smell of a fresh lime on our beer. But we want that beer to be full and that lime to be fresh. Beach users want amenities. They came to the beach to have fun. For that, you need waitstaff, janitors, housekeepers, lifeguards, bartenders, tour guides, shuttle drivers, and musicians.

We want isolation, yet we want our needs met promptly, according to a survey of beach users by Williams and Barugh. Investors solved this contradiction with illusions, especially by moving the hotels closer and closer to the beach. If, when you look to the left, you see your hotel, and you look to the right, you see your hotel, you can forget that there are dozens more stretching either direction down the block … or that some of the people waiting on you don’t have electricity or running water in their homes. This illusion might hold until a major hurricane comes along and blows down the house of cards. After all, the Yucatan Peninsula is the single most hurricane-prone area in the continental Americas.

The Deathtrap Hotel

The ancient Maya built the Castillo at Tulum differently than other temples, including a flat-backed, buttressed wall facing the ocean. Early Spanish visitors, who awed at it from the sea, described it as a castle, and the name stuck. But it wasn’t built to defend against invaders—it was built to defend against the sea.

In contrast to formidable Castillo, today’s sprawling hotels sprung up haphazardly, with the Zen-seeking tourist in mind. For starters, most hotels are too close to the beach. There are Maya ruins on the site of present-day Cancun as well. We could have looked to them as a model. The closest 12 Maya buildings are an average of 942 feet from the ocean. According to Google Earth, the average distance of 12 hotels is 285 feet from the ocean, much closer and much more flood prone. When architect Ricardo Álvarez Salaverry visited Cancun after Hurricane Wilma, he noted dozens of problematic design features—flags and gazebos that broke loose and became projectiles, hallways which became wind tunnels of such force the walls collapsed, and windows that exploded from wind pressure alone.

Fewer people die in Mexico during hurricanes today than in 20th century, mostly thanks to successful evacuation strategies. But the property damage is much larger. Hotel operators can plan for this damage through commercial insurance, but it’s not so great for the people who serve your beer. In 2005, more than 300,000 people lost their homes to flooding in Mexico, much of it related to Hurricane Wilma, and many people also lost their jobs. Bad design also causes beach erosion on an unprecedented scale—90 percent, in some areas. This degradation contributes to literally tons of concrete and plastic dumped into the ocean. (Full disclosure: a chunk of plastic split open my leg while kayaking near Cancun, so I have a personal vendetta).

There are more hurricanes in Cancun’s future. Even without climate change, Cancun has been hit by one or two hurricanes a year since its inception. Until strategies change, hurricane damage will continue to disrupt the economy and destroy one of America’s most beloved beach destinations.

The Hard Truth

Unless you’re in the class of elites who are socially isolating on private islands, you’re probably not rich enough to have true privacy on vacation. Modern tourists rarely do. That’s okay—you just need to change your perspective. Stop hiding in the hotel. Enjoy that fresh beer, but try doing so out in the town. Then look up at the person serving you and practice some more Spanish than simply saying gracias.

As long as beach users expect privacy, isolation, and immediate gratification in a city of more than 600,000 people, Cancun will be a bad place to work and live. It will be difficult to protect workers from economic collapse whenever a disaster hits, and difficult to prevent resulting problems like crime, drug violence, and pollution. Bad feelings will rub off on visitors, and suddenly we all hate the place that was built to our exact specifications.

Cancun is a vibrant, weird, city with people from all over Mexico and the world who have come to work, play, or bum around. Once we start traveling again, I challenge you to visit Cancun and take a second look. Don’t go to Playa del Carmen or try to find somewhere “off the beaten path” (you won’t). Even once isolated places like Isla Holbox are experiencing rampant development, largely thanks to tourist articles urging people to rush to the “Next Tulum”…before tourists destroy it. But don’t hide in a resort, either. Hang out with the waitstaff at your hotel, eat where the locals eat, and take a trip downtown to find some cool street art. The archaeology attractions are great, but ask tour guides to take you to contemporary places with real, live people. Then tell the hotel staff about your fun downtown so they tell their bosses. If you do this, you’ll have fun and eat well. If a few thousand people do it, hoteliers might finally start building safer hotels that are (almost) as durable as el Castillo.