Cancun Hotel Association Concerned About Over-Development

The Cancun, Puerto Morelos and Isla Mujeres Hotel Association is calling the addition of more than 3,000 hotel rooms in a new municipal urban development program for Cancun “irresponsible.”

According to the new Benito Juárez Urban Development Program (PDU), as many as 3,000 rooms could be added in the Pok-Ta-Pok area alone, and several organizations are raising the alarm, filing complaints regarding the PDU, which was recently approved.

“Everyone should be concerned about the over-densification approved for the Pok-Ta-Pok Golf Club because it will exceed the Hotel Zone,” said Jesús Almaguer Salazar, according to a report in the Riviera Maya News.

The fear is that the addition of this many new rooms will cause problems, including traffic. There is also the worry of further burdening the already overloaded Cancun Hotel Zone.

“All of us in Quintana Roo should be concerned about this attempt to over-densify Pok-Ta-Pok, which cannot stand, in itself, without the service structure of the hotel zone which is already insufficient. There are hotels that, with a light rain, experience drainage overflows,” said Almaguer Salazar.

The Pok-Ta-Pok area also suffers from flooding and drainage problems, according to Almaguer Salazar and those need to be fixed to deal with projects that are already in the works, referring to the previously approved addition of rooms on the south side of the hotel zone.

“It is a mistake to allow that. It is something out of the ordinary. They are building a hotel with 3,000 rooms on the south side of the Hotel Zone and now they want to build another 3,000 on the north side,” he said adding that there are currently around 37,000 rooms in the Cancun Hotel Zone.