Mexican city Cancun is big revenue earner

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Mexico City, April 22 (IANS/EFE) Cancun, a lonely beach with dense vegetation 40 years ago, has now become a conglomeration of resorts and is earning huge revenue for Mexico.

Called the “pearl of tourism” and founded on April 20, 1970, Cancun celebrated its 40th anniversary this year.

Forty years ago, what is now a key generator of revenue for Mexico was a forested area comprising a sand dune separated from the mainland by lagoons, where Maya groups settled and traded along maritime routes before the Spanish conquest.

Cancun “pot or nest of snakes” in Maya language was founded in 1968 when the central bank set out to find an ideal spot to build a new tourist destination to duplicate the success of Acapulco on the Pacific.

The white sand beach and the turquoise waters at Cancun convinced Mexican authorities that they had found the perfect place. Work on the project started under president Gustavo Diaz Ordaz in 1970.

Emilio Maldonado and his family, Antonio Hernandez and Gabriel Garrido, all coconut palm growers are officially recognised as the first residents of the city.

What was once a coastal swampy region full of mangroves, virgin forest and unexplored beaches, is now a 30-km- long beach dominated by hotels, resorts, shopping centres, more than 500 restaurants and numerous bars and discotheques where partying doesn’t end till dawn.

The nightlife here has made the area a favourite vacation spot for college students on spring break and one of the most favoured locations to celebrate weddings and honeymoons.

Cancun has also played host to the Miss Universe pageant and World Trade Organisation meetings.

With an average temperature of 27 degrees Celsius, Cancun is visited each year by over four million tourists.

Tourists also flock to nearby archaeological sites like Tulum and Chichen Itza.

The city itself has more than 29,000 hotel rooms and several new projects are under way, including golf courses, aquaparks, ecolgical theme parks, shopping centres and residences.

This titanic effort of building a city from nothing has transformed the zone into Mexico’s most important tourist area and the No. 1 vacation centre in the Caribbean, surpassing the Bahamas and Puerto Rico, according to figures compiled by Cancun’s Tourism and Conventions Office.

–IANS/EFE