Yucatan

(Dive Travel Business News - October 26, 2011) -- Mexico issued a hurricane watch along the Yucatan coast and readied 1,130 storm shelters in Quintana Roo, the state that includes Cancun and Cozumel.  Authorities are evacuating fishing communities on Mexico’s resort-studded Caribbean coast and some tourists began to leave, as Hurricane Rina took aim at Cancun and the island of Cozumel on Wednesday. 

Rina’s maximum sustained winds remained steady at about 110 mph (175 kph) early Wednesday, said the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami, making it a Category 2 storm. Forecasters predict it will strengthen as it nears the Mexican coast Wednesday night before rolling over the island of Cozumel, a popular dive spot and cruise-ship port, then along the coast to Cancun.

State Tourism Director Juan Carlos Gonzalez Hernandez said there were about 83,000 tourists in the state, with about 45,000 of those on a stretch of coast south of Cancun that includes Tulum and Playa de Carmen, and almost 28,000 in Cancun. read more »

(Dive Travel Business News - April 28, 2010) -- Mexico’s state tourism ministers have announced new measures for the country’s tourism sector, including the creating of a new tourism police unit in each state within the next 30 days. In 90 days, each state tourism minster must present urban development plans with an emphasis on the tourism sector and each state’s convention and visitors’ office must create a “Tourism Observatory,” which would essentially be a guide to the state’s tourism offerings. read more »