In recent years Mexico‘s best known tourist destination has been Cancun. Now thanks to the vision of Dario Flota Ocampo, Managing Director of the Riviera Maya Tourism Board, that is only the beginning, as the state of Quintana Roo offers you 12 destinations to explore. Flota Ocampo is the architect of the Mexican Caribbean, a concept that began four years ago, (read that interview here), and now reigns as Mexico’s most visited region, offering travelers extraordinary and yet very diverse destinations, all minutes away from each other.

We caught up with the visionary Flota Ocampo during his recent visit to New York City to learn of the new developments for the region, and how the Mexican Caribbean managed to not only control the pandemic, but thrive in the months after it. 

Based on recent data from the Tourism Market Intelligence System, belonging to the CPTQ, the Mexican Caribbean set a record thanks to its air connectivity, which included 7,100 flights from 101 cities in 25 countries worldwide. The coveted Mexican Caribbean destinations of Cancun, Riviera Maya, Isla Mujeres, Tulum, Chetumal, Holbox and others registered a combined 17 million tourist arrivals from January to September 2022. From January to September, more than 11 million passengers arrived in Quintana Roo’s airports, 15.6 percent more than in 2019, the previous record setting year.

Dario Flota Ocampo

HOMBRE: How do you see the growth of the Mexican Caribbean?
Dario Flota Ocampo: It has been a very successful concept. Under one umbrella of promotion we have brought together twelve destinations within Quintana Roo. Each one targets a different audience. There are places like Cancun and Playa del Carmen that are well known, sophisticated, and diverse. And some that are more exclusive, or environmentally fragile that can not have too many people; and that’s what makes them attractive. The southern part of our state has a number of activities and adventures that also attracts a different audience.

Cancun

And as an integral office, being able to promote these differences has allowed us – even during the difficult years of the pandemic – to obtain the airline connectivity that they did not have before.

Chetumal

H: Can you expound on that?
DFO: For example, the capital of Chetumal now has flights to Mexico City, to Guadalajara, a flight with American Airlines from Miami, and there’s a flight from Guatemala. We never had international flights and now we have two. That power of negotiation of a lone office and that power of communication has proven to be  a successful idea, even through the difficult times of the pandemic.

Bacalar

H: We also see growth in destinations that were somewhat unknown when we spoke four years ago, like Bacalar.
DFO: I remember when we met four years ago we were beginning to speak about Bacalar, especially when people would ask what’s new. For someone who has visited  many times this would be a place they need to see. Many people began to speak about it. The executives of American said that based on the fact that they encountered many mentions of Bacalar they decided to add the flight to Chetumal.
In Bacalar you can see the boom that it recently had of investments, new hotels, luxury properties, and many new restaurants. It has been growing around the lagoon, with a different flavor. It doesn’t resemble Tulum, nor Playa del Carmen, but it’s a very attractive destination. The growth is the result of having new flights, more people visiting, and investments that are coming in.

Isla Mujeres

H: Isla Mujeres and Cozumel are two other destinations within the Mexican Caribbean that are regaining popularity.
DFO: Cozumel suffered quite a bit with the pandemic because they lost their two main sources of revenue, the cruise ships, and the tourists. They are returning little by little, but Cozumel now has even more flights than it had before.

Tulum

H: What other changes did the pandemic bring to the destination?
DFO: In reality, because many countries closed down, cruise ships weren’t sailing, and there were so many restrictions in most places,  there weren’t many options for people to travel (and Mexico never closed their borders.). That was an opportunity for people to visit Riviera Maya for the very first time and discover it. Traveling to Mexico was not in their plans, but now they have discovered something they never imagined, and we are hoping that they return, as most of our visitors return each year.

Mexican Caribbean

H: Can you share the twelve destinations that make up Quintana Roo’s Mexican Caribbean?
DFO: They are Holbox, Isla Mujeres, Cancun, Puerto Morelos, Playa del Carmen, Cozumel, Tulum, Maya Ka’an in the center, and in the south, Bacalar, Chetumal, and Mahahual. 

H: What are the plans for the Mexican Caribbean now?
DFO: Consolidate. Fortunately this has been a good year. Flights have returned. We had a very good winter, in summer we had many flights from Europe, new flights from Portugal, Barcelona, many flights from England, many flights from Nordic countries, like Sweden, and Finland. Also travel from Poland, Belgium, Germany, and Holland meant an excellent summer season. I believe that this year we will equal or surpass the numbers of 2019, which has been our record year. (Following our interview, and according to Carlos Trueba Coll, Cancun Airport’s director, the hub will round up 2022 with an extraordinary 25 million arrivals, ten percent more than it did in 2019. In the last pre-pandemic year, the city had reached a peak of 23.2 million travelers.)

Hilton Cancun

H: What are some of the new resorts or new attractions coming to the region?
DFO: The Maya Train is projected for next year. It’s having complications in Quintana Roo precisely because of environmental factors including the jungle, and the ecological protection. It’s expected to start working in certain regions next year.
There are many new hotels. Hilton Hotels has made some of the strongest investments. They have opened a small hotel within the Cancun Airport which is a Hilton Garden Inn. They opened a new Hilton in the hotel zone in Cancun, a Conrad in Tulum, there’s a new Waldorf Astoria between Cancun and Playa del Carmen. And facing Isla Mujeres, next to Cancun there has been a large number of exclusive resorts opening, the area is named Playa Mujeres.

Dario Flota Ocampo with members of Mexican Caribbean delegation in New York City

H: There seems to be much growth in the region.
DFO: There are new investments. These hotels are opening now because we continued to build during the pandemic. The economy of the region depends on tourism and the state government decided to declare tourism as an essential activity, the same as construction.
Otherwise the economy could not resist being shut down for so long. We took the safety measures very seriously. Our state was one of the best in handling the pandemic. Even with so many international visitors we never had our hospitals saturated, we never had serious cases neither among residents and workers, nor among tourists.

Riviera Maya Jazz Festival

H: It’s an exciting time with the Riviera Maya Jazz Festival coming up between November 25 -27.
DFO: This year we celebrate 20 years of the Riviera Maya Jazz Festival. The last two years we had to do them without an audience, virtually. It was strange to be in a theater with very talented artists but without any guests. Right now we are working on the lineup and we expect it to be a great festival. The aim is to once again do it on the beach, in a great stage, and to celebrate in a big way this twentieth anniversary.

H: Your baby!
DF: It’s 20 years now, the baby is growing up (laughs).

H: What other events are coming to the Mexican Caribbean?
DFO: The traditional ones. At the end of the year we have the PGA golf tournament in Mayakoba, there is the Ironman in Cozumel. This year we had an election in the state that created a parentheses of uncertainty. Moving forward we expect to know their ideas  and strategies to continue with the plans for promotion. (In September Mara Lezama became the first woman elected governor for the state of Quintana Roo.)

H: You have been doing this for many years, always thriving, to what do you attribute so much success?
DFO: There are many challenges, many difficulties, and many limitations also. The important thing is to remain alert of what is happening around the world. The pandemic affected all of us. We had to see how other important destinations handled this situation, like New York, Las Vegas, France and learn from our mistakes, and the mistakes of others.
The pandemic was expanding from Asia, to Europe, then to Canada and then it came to the United States. The mistake we made in perception was believing that everything will go back to normal in that order, and that wasn’t the case. The US returned to normalcy before Canada, Europe opened and then closed, opened and then closed again. We were paying attention to those developments.
A decision we made that we see as key to our recovery was to have flights return. We have two years of working closely with the airlines and the result is that today we have greater connectivity than we had before the pandemic. More airlines, more destinations, more non-stop flights between the US and our airports like Cancun and Cozumel. Chetumal now has international flights. That’s the line to continue.
We had the good fortune that since there were few options many people discovered us for the first time. Now that there are more destinations open and that the competition returns with great strength, we see that our numbers now through the end of the year will remain high. The return of old destinations is not taking away from us.

Dario Flota Ocampo With HOMBRE Magazine’s Francisco Romeo