Cancun Airport News
Good news for visitors arriving at Cancun International Airport, the department of Immigration will soon be adding more e-gates and up to 100 representatives in border control at the different terminals to speed up passport processing times. It is also focusing on staff training to improve the arrival experience for incoming passengers.
Cancun celebrates its 55th anniversary in April
Cancun, Mexico’s leading beach destination, celebrates its 55th anniversary this April. One of the world’s leading beach playgrounds, it’s incredible to think that this stretch of Caribbean shoreline was once a desert island dotted with palm groves and visited only by the occasional fisherman. It wasn’t even on the map! At the end of the 1960s, it was selected to be the site of the country’s first master-planned resort. Building began in 1970 and the rest is history.
The story of how Cancun island was transformed into Mexico’s first master-planned tourism development, a Caribbean destination visited by millions of tourists from all over the world and a gateway to Mexico is a tale of pioneers, feats of engineering and a shared vision.
During the term of Mexican President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, 1964 – 1970, politicians and planners began to discuss the enormous potential of tourism as a tool for national development and the need to diversify an economy that was increasingly dependent on oil exports. The President ordered the Bank of Mexico to develop a National Tourism Plan and search for a location to build a new beach resort.
In 1968, a team of Bank of Mexico researchers embarked on a mission to explore the country’s 9,000 kilometers of Pacific, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico coastline and find the beach that would become Mexico’s first planned resort. After months of fieldwork and analysis, they came up with a shortlist: Cancun in the territory of Quintana Roo on the east coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, the Los Cabos area and Loreto in Baja California Sur, Ixtapa-Zihuatenejo in Guerrero and Huatulco in Oaxaca. Cancun was chosen due to its beaches and coral reefs, climate, location, proximity to a world of natural and historical attractions, the availability of land and the need to create jobs and boost the regional economy.
The Cancun project was approved in 1969 and work began in 1970. To transform 17 kilometers of sand, swamp, dune and jungle into the Hotel Zone we know today, build an airport and a city on the mainland where there was only dense jungle, and install the infrastructure required by tourists and residents alike was an enormous engineering challenge, nevertheless by 1974, work was underway on Mexico’s first master-planned resort.
In a feat of engineering and land reclamation, Cancun island was widened to between 250 and 300 meters. Two hundred and forty hectares of land were consolidated, 80 hectares of landfill were added and 372,000 cubic meters of silt were dredged from the channels that connected Nichupte Lagoon with the Caribbean.
Once the island was widened, building began on the first hotels and the new city on the mainland. The first three hotels were inaugurated in 1974 with a total of 332 rooms and by 1975, 15 hotels had already opened. One of the destination’s pioneer companies, Royal Resorts was founded in 1975. Building began at its first resort, The Royal Cancun (Club Internacional de Cancun) in 1977 and it opened in 1978.
By 1980, Cancun had 47 hotels and was welcoming 460,000 visitors. The same year, a gathering of international leaders called the North-South Summit really put it on the world map.
Topping the one-million tourists mark in 1989, Cancun has never looked back. Welcoming millions of visitors each year, it has spearheaded the growth of the Mexican Caribbean, which now has more than 200,000 hotel rooms with another 10,000 being added each year throughout the state, in Cancun, Playa Mujeres, Puerto Morelos, the Riviera Maya, Tulum, Cozumel and elsewhere in the state of Quintana Roo.
Wherever you are, on April 20, join Royal Resorts in wishing Cancun a happy birthday and many more!
New, Mexican Caribbean Music Festival
British rock legend and 17-time Grammy winner Sting will headline the First Mexican Caribbean Music Festival in Tulum on May 17. This new concert will take the place of the iconic Riviera Maya Jazz Fest and while Tulum will be welcoming performers for the inaugural event, other destinations in the state will host concerts in the future.
Sacred Mayan Journey
Celebrated on May 16 and 17 in the Riviera Maya, the Travesia Sagrada Maya or Sacred Mayan Journey is the reenactment of an ancient Mayan pilgrimage in a fleet of wooden canoes to the holy island of Cozumel to worship at the shrine of the goddess Ixchel.
Xcaret Park is the location of ancient Polé, once a Mayan port and the departure point for pilgrimages to Cozumel. At dawn, around 300 oarsmen will board their canoes in the bay and set sail with the blessing of Mayan priests, the ruler and his courtiers and Polé villagers.
The pilgrims make landfall on Cozumel at Chankanaab Park at around 1 p.m. and worship at the shrine of Ixchel. The return voyage to the mainland is the following day and they are greeted in Polé with great joy.
After six months of arduous dawn training sessions, hundreds of oarsmen from Cancun, Cozumel, Playa del Carmen, Tulum and even further afield are ready for the Travesia Sagrada Maya or Sacred Mayan Journey. They follow the sea route taken by ancient Mayan pilgrims who traveled to the sacred island of Cozumel (Kuzamil) to worship at the shrine of Ixchel, the goddess of fertility, childbirth and the moon and tides. Depicted as an old woman or a beautiful young maiden, Ixchel was also the patron of fishing, painting and weaving.
If you would like to witness the Sacred Mayan Journey, ask at the Thomas More Travel desk in your resort for Xcaret tour and ticket options.
