Quintana Roo Essay

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Quintana Roo, Mexico has become an internationally acclaimed tourist development area over the past six years. This may be a difficult concept to grasp considering the states economic condition at the end of the 20th, and the first decade of the 21st century. The current status of a tourism haven was not easily accomplished. It took many years of cooperative tourism planning amongst the state, national government officials, and most importantly, the local communities of the areas being developed.

In the early 1990’s, the country of Mexico was searching for untapped tourism resources. The purpose of this search was because popular tourist destinations, like Cancun, were reaching their saturation points and becoming commonplace destinations to the global tourism market. At this point in time, the country’s tourism industry was lacking direction and focus (Levin 5). Top tourism officials were beginning to realize that the “traditional products of sun, sea, and sand were losing inherent value in a continually more competitive market” (Levin 3). Essentially, the country was losing the upper-end of the consumer market, which had greater purchasing power. For a few years, Mexico’s tourism officials tried to rejuvenate many of their popular tourist destinations through various marketing strategies and additional funding. This was an attempt to prevent decline in tourist arrivals. The rejuvenation process proved to be difficult as many of these areas had no additional land to build upon, and were experiencing environmental problems due to overdevelopment.

High profile tourists began to seek other international destinations; and as overall tourist numbers began to drop, tourism officials and other multi-national corporations were searching for other areas to develop. The answer lied in the state of Quintana Roo.

Quintana Roo is situated on the eastern side of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. “The population, except for the concentrations in Chetumal, the state capital, and a few towns, [was] dispersed in hamlets and villages” (Encyc. Br. Online). This undeveloped land was situated outside of the already developed beach resorts that dominated the Mexican tourism industry. The reason for the isolation of parts of the Quintana Roo region was due to the fact that there were not well developed roads or communication linkages with sophisticated regions. Quintana Roo contained valuable untapped resources, such as: the many miles of white, sandy beach shoreline along the Riviera Maya, traditional Mayan communities, the Great Maya Reef and intriguing ancient Mayan ruins (Internet 1).

The significance of Quintana Roo’s undisturbed and natural areas was crucial to Mexico’s tourism industry as other leading tourism countries were turning to a more environmentally based “ecotourism” (Daltabuit and Pi-Sunyer 43). The discovery of these untapped regions gave the Mexican tourism industry the resources necessary to attract this new tourism market.

In 2001, “The Fondo Nacional de Fomento al Turismo (FONATUR)” announced the allocation of 500 million pesos to continue the development of ecologically based tourism in the Quintana Roo region (Latin Am 17). There were some previous “ecotourism” developments in the area; but these attractions ran into reoccurring problems. Ecotourism can be defined as, “sustainable nature-based recreation and tourism” (Lindber and McKercher 65).

Before these public and private national, and multi-national agencies, and corporations invaded this area springing up these “new” ecotourist attractions, the country, for the most part, had relied upon mass development of an area. Until this point, this type of rapid development was usually at the hands of outside investors, and national agencies who had different agendas, as well as conflicting interests with the local communities. The problems arose because while these developments helped bolster the national economy for the short term, they were not sustainable. Mass tourism areas caused great harm to the natural environment and to the local communities.

When the Quintana Roo region was in the planning process, the goal for the development of this new tourism product was to eliminate the problems of sustainability that Mexico had been dealing with in the overdeveloped beach resorts. The government officials involved in the planning process knew they had many great natural resources and archaeological ruins to promote; however, their implemented plans proved to be inefficient.

The national and multi-national bodies involved in the implementation of these plans began to deviate from their goal of promoting the environment, and its many attractions to tourists in their pristine state. The old mentality of “bigger is better” began to take over. The developing areas that were undisturbed only a few years ago, and supposed to be sites for tourists to: view untouched archaeological remains, swim on remote beaches, or see culture in its traditional state were becoming commercialized and monopolized by exterior powers.

Well-developed roads were taking over the dirt and gravel transportation linkages of the past. The people of these communities were losing their sense of identity, and helplessly trying to hang onto their cultural heritage. The only roles of the local communities was to serve as cheap labor during the development of a new attraction, or to act as a circus clown displaying Mayan culture and way of life in its commercialized form. What was supposed to start out as small scale, sustainable development was slowly turning into mass tourism development; and bringing with it, the side effects that were plaguing the economy and its people for quite some time.

For the first decade of the 21st century, there was no action taken by the national tourism offices to step in and halt the massive development. Instead, they were accomplishing national short-term goals of raising economic standards. The new tourist enclaves in Quintana Roo were experiencing steady growth in tourist arrivals over these first ten years; nevertheless, between the years of 2010 and 2015, the region was beginning to experience stagnation, cramped living conditions for locals as they kept being pushed further to the outskirts of major tourist developments and serious environmental hazards that were destroying the ecology of the area.

The local Quintana Roo communities were fed up. This was becoming an all too common picture for local residents as they remembered back to the days of Cancun. When Cancun was in its prime stage, they remembered not having any input into planning processes and only being used as cheap labor, or as artifacts to be put on showcase for tourists. They were tired of having their fate at the...

1. Levin, Baron. “Suite dreams.” Chamber of Commerce of Mexico Business Mexico 1
June 1999. Reproduced by Lexis Nexis Academic Universe.
2. “Quintana Roo” Encyclopedia Britanica Online. *http://www.eb.com:180/bol/topic?eu=63870&sctn=1* [Acessed 13 November 1999].
3. Internet: http://www.rivieramaya.com/english/riviera.stm You should cite this paper as follows:

MLA Style
. EssayMania.com. Retrieved on 26 May, 2012 from
    <http://essaymania.com/68252/quintana-roo>

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