News

The ‘After Wilma’ group pool on Flickr now boasts over 500 photos. Each one paints a picture. Together, they tell a story.

For those of you interested in these things… this blog has generated over 70,000 page views since January 1st. I’m indebted to many people who have contributed in so many ways. Thank you all.

There’s so much more work to be done.

LP’s Ali Collier conducted a 20-minute telephone interview recently with Oregon-based Suzanne Plank, a contributing author to the popular Mexico guide.

You can download the podcast from their website.

Suzanne was in the region in Sept/Oct last year, researching for the guide’s 10th edition. The author is asked about her experiences "living through Wilma" (actually she fled to Campeche) and covers the region’s "miraculous recovery" since then.

No big scoop, but a good general intro / listen… with one caveat: Suzanne, the Sheraton hotel did not "collapse". The Resort building has been demolished to make way for the Westin Lagunamar, which will rise in its place.

Meanwhile, after a week of celebrations in Cozumel (and elsewhere), Michael Gerber has posted this set of carnival…

Shortly after two o’clock this afternoon, the ferry Bahía del Espíritu Santo was finally refloated following a painstaking salvage operation lasting two and a half months.

Novedades reports that an all-Mexican team of 60 engineers had worked to free the vessel from where it wedged in the sands near Puerto Juárez.

The 2000-tonne vessel seems likely to resume ferrying passengers between Cancún and Cozumel at some point in the future.

I’ve been following progress since my January 12th post. I guess this should be viewed as another symbolic step in Cancun’s rehabilitation.

In December I wrote of the tempest some holidaymakers’ unleashed against tour operators over their treatment before and after Hurricane Wilma.

Today, TravelMole reports that in the UK, the big operators face a group action "claiming they should not have been flown to Mexico in the first place and that once Wilma struck, not enough was done to help."

Solicitors Alexander Harris are representing (according to The Times) 284 customers who travelled to Cancún with MyTravel, Thomas Cook, Thomson, First Choice and Cosmos.

The number of claims for compensation rose sharply after the story was highlighted on ITV’s Tonight with Trevor McDonald programme last month.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of this case, it’s clear that the operators didn’t do enough over ensuing months to fend off the…

"More than 100 foreign and domestic journalists as well as tourism officials and business people who will [sic] take part in the fourth edition of the National Tourism and Communications Forum, held in Cancún from Feb. 8th thru Feb. 10th."

"Will take part…held…" Mixing tenses. The confusion is not surprising given the official press release from the Mexico Tourism Board was posted online on February 8th, the day of the event.

Why hold a tourism and communications forum and not let media know about the event in advance? Seems counterproductive to me.

Journalist friend Jon Clark did make it to Cancún and ruminates about the spring break market in an article published today.

This follows a recent piece in USA Today which quoted Steve Wright, who runs the…

Cozumel mayor Gustavo Ortega Joaquín announced yesterday an investment of US$40m dollars to ready the island’s cruise ship piers for the next generation of even bigger vessels.

Ortega commented to journalists that the Punta Langosta pier in San Miguel de Cozumel would welcome the world’s largest cruise ship, the Freedom of the Seas, in June.

The 160,000-ton, 3,634-passenger vessel (pictured, right, at the Aker Yard in Finland) will be the largest cruise ship in the world when it debuts in May 2006.

Currently, cruise ships are mooring offshore and ferrying in passengers by tender.

Many of Cancun’s classiest hotels and tourist attractions pummeled by the hurricane have resorted to borrowing as insurers dither over post-Wilma payouts.

On Monday, during his stop in the resort for the start of the beach recovery project, Tourism Minister Rodolfo Elizondo Torres angered hoteliers by suggesting that some had not kept up with premium payments while others had exaggerated claims of damage to property. "The government," he said, "could not intervene in what were ‘personal’ disagreements."

The Governor of Quintana Roo, Félix González Canto, said insurers had been slow to react in the aftermath of the hurricane. He accused the industry of taking advantage of every available "legal loophole" not to respond to appeals from businesses affected by Wilma and…

Hurricane Wilma was even stronger than originally estimated when it slammed into the Mexican Caribbean, the National Hurricane Center said in its final report (pdf) on the storm today.

Wilma was for a time the most intense Atlantic hurricane on record, with top sustained winds near 185 mph and the lowest central pressure ever noted at 882 millibars (Oct. 19th), the report said. Forecasters had already confirmed that pressure, but the report increased the winds by 10 mph.

Wilma made its first landfall as a Category 4 hurricane on October 21st on the island of Cozumel with sustained winds of about 150 mph. At the time, Wilma was estimated to packed 140-mph winds.

Last year’s Atlantic hurricane season was the busiest in 154 years…

Novedades reports today that the car and cargo ferry Bahia del Espiritu Santo, which beached near Puerto Juárez during Hurricane Wilma should be back in deep water in about one week. She will then head to Cuba for repairs.

The ship has been captured on camera by no fewer than three different contributors to the After Wilma photo pool; by Ozzy on October 30th, one week after Wilma, and more recently by Esteban on December 27th and Cliff two days later.

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. 

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?

People are going to be skeptical to book way in advance in that June to November date.

I think [2005] scared a lot of people… and forecasts keep saying we’re going to have another banner year again…. You’re going to see a slowing of booking patterns into that region.

Do I think Cancún and the Riviera Maya are going to bounce back? Yes, I don’t have any doubt…