Mexico Beaches and Beach Resorts

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More number of travelers are coming to Mexico to visit its beautiful white-sand beaches and beachside resorts. . Acapulco's beach is lined with high rise hotels and with 20000 hotel rooms it is Mexico's biggest coastal resort. All the other traditional resorts (including Vallarta and Mazatlan in the tropical zone) together provide another 35000 hotel rooms and attracted over 20 million visitors in 2006. Loreto and Cabo San Lucas (on the Baja California peninsula) are two fairly small modern beach resorts, while the resort of La Paz is based on an older settlement. All these resorts are accessible by road from California.

Two major purpose built coastal complexes are sited on the tropical Pacific coast. Ixtapa and Zihuatanejo has a 25 km beach backed by high rise hotels providing 5000 hotel rooms. A potentially much bigger development (that could expand to 27 000 rooms) is the Bay of Huatulco project, covering a 35 km stretch of coastline.

On the north coast of Mexico (the Gulf coast) there are fewer resorts. Some of the coast is inclustrialised with offshore oil fields. There is, however, a cluster of purpose built modern resorts on the tip of the Yucatan peninsula where the waters are clear and unpolluted, with good coral and excellent snorkelling, e.g. at Isla Mujeres, Cozumel and Cancun. Cancun was the first to be opened in the late 1970s, and had 25000 hotel rooms by 2006.

The beach resorts and Mexico City itself are the most popular destinations. In terms of total numbers of visitors, the rank order of destinations is
1 Cancun
2 Mexico City
3 Acapulco
4 Merida (Yucatan)
5 Oaxaca
6 Cozumel
7 Puerto Vallarta
8 Los Cabos
9 Guadalajara
10 Manzanillo
11 The colonial cities
12 Ecotourism destination