Cancun, MEXICO. December 23, 1999. Vicki and I first came to Cancun thirteen years ago. The main difference between Cancun tourism then and now is that now there's no one here.
According to the local newspaper, arrivals have been down all year. Our innkeeper confirms that this has been the worst year he's seen. But last week things went from bad to very bad: high season didn't happen. On Monday our innkeeper raised room rates, as directed by the Tourist Board. The place cleared out. On Wednesday he lowered them back to what they were.
Bars and restaurants, hotels and shopping centers, buses and boats, they're all empty. We see the odd Mexican tourist, from Mexico City and other population centers. A few Europeans have come over on charters. But that's about it. The huge numbers of American and Canadian tourists from the eastern seaboard and central states--Cancun's white meat--stayed home or went someplace else.
The betting here is that they stayed home, for three reasons: millennium price gouging, fears of terrorism, and fears of the Y2K bug. I would add a fourth reason: people stayed home to ring in the millennium with friends and family.
So Vicki and I find ourselves in a buyer's market. Our huge fan-cooled hotel room in town--three double beds, table and two chairs, dressing table, and balcony with chairs--is US$ 26. A beer in a restaurant costs from seventy cents to a dollar, a dollar fifty on the beach. A margarita is a buck during Happy Hour. Lunch--the day's main meal here--for two in a local's restaurant is about six dollars. Dinner is maybe twice that in an Italian place, steak house, or tourist restaurant. (These are prices in Cancun City. In the hotel zone the Hyatt Regency charges pretty much the same as any other Hyatt Regency, any place in the world.)
So Vicki and I decided to stick around for Christmas, and maybe for New Year's, too. It's fun having the place to ourselves.