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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | November 2005 
Cancun's Image Damaged
 Wire services
| | Tourists hang out in the sandless Delfines beach in Cancun, Mexico on Sunday Oct. 30, 2005. Even after hurricane Wilma destroyed most of the infrastructure and the beaches of Cancun, planeloads of tourists are flying back in, bound for less-damaged resorts south of Cancun. (AP Photo/Israel Leal) |
In recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Wilma, hardhit resorts like Cancun face two equally daunting challenges. The first to physically restore and rebuild this part of the nation's Caribbean coast, which was battered for 60 hours by torrential rains and winds that reached 110 mph is expected to take at least several months. The second to repair the public relations damage that was inflicted during the recovery process (or, according to some bitter vacationers, the lack thereof) could take much, much longer.
The plight of many of the tens of thousands who got caught in the storm and its chaotic aftermath and who were stranded in under-equipped shelters with little food or water have some repeat visitors questioning whether they will ever return to the region. At the very least, some tour companies and hotels may have lost more than a few potential customers and almost certainly need to rethink their emergency procedures.
About half of the stranded tourists ended up in emergency shelters, while others fled the area or managed to get rooms at low-rate hotels downtown. Those trying to leave after found the Cancun airport was wrecked. After days of living on tuna fish and crackers, dozens of angry tourists said they were disgusted with tour companies and hotels, which, they charged, failed to warn them about the storm, then, after it was over, gave them little or no information.
Several said they were told by representatives of tour companies that they would lose their return tickets if they left the shelters, which had become so unsanitary people were getting ill.
"There was some guy from Expedia telling us we had to stay at least 48 more hours for them to get us out of here," recalled Jesse Corning, a 32-year-old pipe fitter from Kenai, Alaska. "This is after five days in shelters with no running water. I said, 'No way. We are not staying here.' " (Katie Deines, a spokeswoman for Expedia, said the agent who talked to Corning had not accurately reported company policy. During hurricanes, she said, Expedia will change or cancel travel arrangements at no extra charge in order to get customers onto a different flight or into a hotel.)
Corning and his wife, Jacinda, were interviewed while waiting in the Merida airport, 200 miles from Cancun, where many U.S. citizens had been bused. Corning had just paid 1,000 to get a Mexicana flight to Dallas the next morning. "All I know is, I'm going to get to American soil, and I am never coming back," he said.
If there are more people like the Cornings and interviews with several other vacationers suggest there are then tourist officials and hotel companies in resort areas like Cancun and Cozumel have a lot of work ahead of them to try to restore some good will. And they don't have much time to do it: Wilma hit the Mexico coast Oct. 21, just two months before the area's peak holiday season.
Sunny Predictions
On the first sunny day, President Vicente Fox went to Cancun and promised that the region would be 80 percent ready by Christmas an optimistic appraisal, given that local tourism officials say that up to 90 percent of Cancun's hotel rooms had been damaged and that tons of the resort's powdery white beach sand swept to sea. Nonetheless, in the days after the storm, tourism officials and hotels throughout the region began issuing bulletins on when they would reopen.
The Riviera Maya Tourism Promotion Board reported that 60 percent of the hotels in the area would be operating by early November and that by Dec. 15 that figure would be 90 percent.
Much of Playa del Carmen is now open for business, according to Michael Halle, a spokesman for the tourist board, who said that Tulum, like much of the southern Riviera Maya, fared better than the northern stretch. Among the luxury resorts in the area, the Ikal del Mar spa and resort, about 10 miles north of Playa del Carmen, suffered moderate damage and will reopen in mid-December, while Amansala, another resort near Tulum, reopened six days after the storm struck. Barcelo Hotels and Resorts, a Spanish chain, said that two new hotels it is building on the Riviera Maya will open on schedule in December.
But in Cancun and on the resort island of Cozumel, the news was uncertain. Barcelo had no date for the reopening of its two Cancun hotels. Marriott Hotels announced that it was closing the Ritz-Carlton, Cancun and its two other hotels through the end of the year. Palace Resorts, the largest hotel operator in the region, was expected to reopen three of its seven resorts by Christmas, according to John McCarthy, director of Mexico's tourism development fund. But the Palace's Cozumel resort will not reopen until April 1.
Hyatt Hotels said the Hyatt Regency Cancun would remain closed until March 1 while a second hotel, the Hyatt Cancun Caribe Villas and Resort, would reopen Feb. 1. InterContinental Hotels said its two resort hotels, in Cancun and Cozumel, would be closed until Jan. 31, along with a Holiday Inn in Cancun. Grupo Posadas, the nation's leading hotel chain, which has some 1,700 hotel rooms in the area (including the luxury spa Fiesta Americana Aqua), announced that its hotels would be closed until Dec. 15.
The cruise business has also been hit hard. Because of damage to the piers at Cozumel, Carnival Cruise Lines and Royal Caribbean Cruises are suspending stops at the island indefinitely.
‘Whatever The Cost’
Underscoring the urgency to rebuild both the region's infrastructure and its image, a determined President Fox returned to Cancun on Oct. 27. "Whatever it costs, we have it," Fox said.
But the costs will be extraordinary. The reinsurance company Partners Re estimated the damage at US2 billion to US2.5 billion. And with almost 60,000 hotel rooms, Cancun and the Riviera Maya are losing 15 million every day that tourists stay away.
Whatever the timetable for repairing the infrastructure, there are other problems to address, like the anger of U.S. tourists, many of whom had bought package vacations from low-cost charter companies. Some charged that those tour companies' representatives all but disappeared during the storm.
Some tour companies, though, were said to have done a decent job of evacuating their clients to Merida. Among them was Thomson Worldwide, a British company, which flew in dozens of agents, arranged for buses to carry tourists from resorts around Cancun to Merida on Monday, and then helped find them flights out.
Cathy Pelaez, chief operating officer of Liberty Travel, based in Ramsey, N.J., said that although there was little that could be done in the two days following the storm, Liberty representatives checked on their clients in storm shelters and, as soon as charter flights could be booked, transported about 700 guests by bus straight to the tarmac of the Cancun airport.
How awful one's experience was depended very much on where one stayed. Those who had booked rooms at the JW Marriott or the Ritz-Carlton in Cancun said they were relatively well cared for. Once Wilma arrived, Marriott International transported its guests aboard buses to a high-class (and solidly constructed) brothel near the airport, where they were served three meals a day throughout the ordeal. (Apparently, the prostitutes were not present.) Later, Marriott International and its subsidiary The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co. chartered buses to take 239 guests to Merida and then hired two jets to carry them to Mexico City and Atlanta, at no charge.
Stuck In Merida
But finding a plane out of Merida was not easy for everyone. For instance, Todd Bahel and his girlfriend, Christine Zabkowski, from Baltimore, endured four nights in a shelter in Cancun, until they boarded a bus to Merida. "We were told this ride would take five hours. It took 10," Bahel said.
On the bus's arrival, the police told them that the Merida airport was closed for the night. They spent another night in a shelter, and on Tuesday tried to procure a flight any flight to the United States. A "near riot" broke out in the terminal while boarding passes and flight manifests were scribbled onto pieces of paper, Bahel said. At least one private plane departed with no passengers aboard because of infighting with airport bureaucrats.
On Oct. 26, five days after their scheduled return flight, they arrived at Dulles Airport, near Washington.
"I wouldn't go back to Mexico," Bahel said. "But then I think about the staff of the hotels and how heartbreaking their stories were and how compassionate they were to help us, and I feel differently." |
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