January, 2006

A New Mexico resident has posted a pretty good summary of the current situation in Cozumel and elsewhere on the Bill-in-Tulsa.com forum. His experience (sorry, I do not know his name) over the festive fortnight would appear to support most of the other reports coming my way.

Sol Meliá is keeping five of its eleven Mexico properties closed a little longer than first planned after damage caused by Hurricane Wilma, reports Bloomberg.

The Majorca-based company has closed three five-star hotels in Cancún and two resorts on Cozumel until as late as June. This means that more than half of Sol Meliá’s 3,499 hotel rooms in Mexico are currently shut.
 
The Meliá Turquesa, which has more than 400 rooms, is closed until June 30th, while the 800-room Gran Meliá Cancún is shut until March 31st.

There is as yet no re-opening date for the Sol Cabañas del Caribe located on Cozumel.

Sol Meliá expect insurers to cover the cost of patching up its hotels. 

David Kindler and his wife Lynn like to stay at the Fiesta Americana Dive Resort on their trips to Cozumel, but the hotel was badly damaged in the hurricane.

Last month, they stayed at the Scuba Club Cozumel instead, an all inclusive resort with its own diving charter.

They hired scooters and followed the badly churned up road down the island’s leeward western shore to inspect the damage to their old favourite.

"There were around three hundred construction workers on site the day we stopped by," David writes. "[The hotel] expects to remain closed until February."

Many of the construction workers are migrants, mostly from the impoverished southern state of Chiapas. They work long hours and at the end of the day, drop their tools and sling up a hammock, either on the spot or in outdoor camps.

During David and Lynn’s week-long stay (December 12th to 19th), …

Journalist Jane Engle asked Susan Tanzman, the American Society of Travel Agents ‘2005 Travel Agent of the Year’ what she sees for travel in 2006. Here’s an excerpt from their December 19th chat:

Regarding the Caribbean, what do you see as the effect in 2006 of the severe weather that we’ve had in some of the coastal resort areas?

Do I think Cancún and the Riviera Maya are going to bounce back? Yes, I don’t have any doubt they will. But the issue is: What’s the consumer going to do? - January 1st