Mexican Caribbean Prepares to Open on June 8

After two months of quarantine, the Mexican Caribbean is preparing to reopen its doors to tourists. During the first months of 2019, the main Mexican Caribbean destinations Cancun, Isla Mujeres, Cozumel and the Riviera Maya enjoyed an average hotel occupancy of almost 70 percent, according to CBRE figures published in a note by El Economista. Today, occupancy rates are at 2.8 percent, according to data from the Cancun, Puerto Morelos and Isla Mujeres Hotel Association.

However, the Mexican Caribbean seems to have a solution to this. The Director of the Tourism Promotion Council of Quintana Roo, Darío Flota, announced in an interview with CNN that the Mexican Caribbean obtained an international health certification that will serve to reactivate operations by providing confidence to visitors and to reactivate tourism activities in the area. It is expected that with the suggested adaptations, hotels in the area can reopen on June 8.

The Caribbean tourism industry seeks to find a balance between saving lives and keeping the economy afloat. Jordi Sastre, Entrepreneur & Business Angel of NYX Hotel wrote in his Expert Opinion article for MBN that “the threat of COVID-19 in this southeastern state will not only produce a major health problem but will also generate a huge socio-economic burden. The measures taken seek to strike a balance between containing the virus and destroying the economy in the short to medium term.” 
The delicate balance relies, according to Sastre, on the fact that only the state of Quintana Roo is estimated to encompass more than 1,000 hotels and 100,000 rooms, which represent around 15 percent of the country's total with an annual economic impact of over US$15 billion. Moreover, the tertiary sector, which includes tourism, represents 90 percent of Quintana Roo's GDP.

Once the Mexican Caribbean hotel industry resumes operations, it will have to adapt to the new reality of post-COVID-19 tourism. On the one hand, it must implement sanitary measures based on its new international sanitary certification. On the other, it must continue to deal with the daily obstacles of the tourist sector in the area, such as sargassum, Airbnb, the insecurity that affects the northern part of Quintana Roo and the space left in tourism promotion by the termination of Mexico’s Tourism Promotion Council, according to Roberto Cintrón Gómez, Leader of the Cancun and Puerto Morelos Hotel Association, in an interview with the Economist.