Cancun Hotel and Resorts - Paylessresorts

The major tourist areas of Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Cozumel, Mexico, escaped relatively unscathed from the fury of Hurricane Dean, which made landfall as a Category 5 storm near Costa Maya and Majahual, some 225 miles south of Cancun. Tourists had largely evacuated the three major coastal areas by the time Dean roared ashore before dawn Tuesday, with some 75,000 tourists fleeing by air or to more secure areas inland by car or charter busses, according to the Mexico Tourism Board. Those who couldn’t or decided not to get out rode out the storm in their hotels or at the airports. Hotels in Mexico are mostly open for business and reported minimal damage, and airlines are making their return to the affected areas. Resorts in Cancun, Cozumel and Playa del Carmen that did sustain damage reported mostly broken windows and blown sand. Damage to Costa Maya, the Mexican cruise port near the border of Belize where Hurricane Dean made landfall, is still being assessed, said Cesar Lizarraga, Costa Maya’s director of sales and marketing. Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste, the Mexican airport group that operates several of the country’s top airports, said the Cancun, Cozumel and Merida airports have resumed operations and reported minimal or no damage.

Beautifully designed hotels offer a natural backdrop for fine and decorative art displays. Grand lobbies or intimate niches alike lend themselves to installations of everything from classic paintings and decorative pottery to modern sculpture and glasswork. And, best of all, a well-planned and-presented art collection can be a marketing plus for your property, attracting new business.

The Hotel Sheraton Maria Isabel in Mexico City set off an international controversy after expelling 16 Cuban officials from its premises in early February. The hotel said it made the decision at the instruction of its parent company, US-based Starwood Hotels. The parent company was following the directive of the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in accordance with the US embargo against Cuba. Under the Helms-Burton Law, US companies are prohibited from supplying services to Cuban individuals or companies.

The Hotel Sheraton Maria Isabel in Mexico City set off an international controversy after expelling 16 Cuban officials from its premises in early February. The hotel said it made the decision at the instruction of its parent company, US-based Starwood Hotels. The parent company was following the directive of the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in accordance with the US embargo against Cuba. Under the Helms-Burton Law, US companies are prohibited from supplying services to Cuban individuals or companies.

With its convenient location, luxurious ambiance and the finest in personal service, the JW Marriott Hotel Mexico City is the ideal choice for business travelers. “Our guests include many executives from multinational corporations and business professionals who appreciate the classic elegance of our hotel,” says Kevin Schwab, General Manager.

Opened in 1996, the 312-room JW Marriott Hotel Mexico City is located in the exclusive Polanco district of the city, just minutes from major corporate offices and some of the best restaurants and boutiques of the world-famous Presidente Masaryk Avenue. It is also within walking distance to the seven principal museums of the city and minutes from the Zona Rosa, also well known for its shopping and nightlife.

“Our clientele consists largely of travelers from the United States, as well as from Europe, Canada and other regions of Mexico,” says Clavel Garibay, Sales Director. “Our hotel has extensive meeting facilities and our building is also the home of Club de Industriales, where the most important business people of Mexico come on a regular basis.

The JW Marriott Mexico City is noted for its convenient location to major companies, including Chrysler, Dupont, General Electric, General Motors, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Pepsi and Procter & Gamble.

The JW Marriott Hotel Mexico City–which holds a “Four Diamond” rating from the American Automobile Association (AAA)–was honored recently in annual “World’s Best” lists compiled by two international travel magazines.

Conde Nast Traveler’s 2003 Gold List and Gold List Reserve recognized the JW Marriott Hotel Mexico City and four other JW Marriott Hotels and Resorts. Travel + Leisure’s first annual “T+L 500–The Best Hotels in the World” honored the JW Marriott Hotel Mexico City and four other Marriott properties.

The JW Marriott brand represents the most elegant and luxurious hotels carrying the Marriott name. They cater to discerning upscale travelers seeking a lodging experience of high comfort and prestige, according to Garibay. “JW Marriott Hotels extend the traditional Marriott culture of warm, genuine hospitality and dependability in a more luxurious environment with upgraded amenities and high levels of personal service,” she says.

Last year, the JW Marriott Hotel Mexico City won top honors in the Latin America and Caribbean region in the Ultimate Service Awards, the only global award that recognizes good service in the hotel industry. Travelers in more than 120 countries voted online in this independent initiative involving CNN Partner Hotels, American Express and Taylor Nelson Sofres Hospitality and Leisure. The awards recognize hotels and their employees that make an effort to provide memorable and enjoyable guest stays.

Guests at the 26-story hotel enjoy some of the most spectacular views of the city, including Chapultepec Park and Presidente Masaryk Avenue. On the Executive level, guests enjoy special privileges, such as wireless services, complimentary continental breakfast, afternoon snacks and an honor bar in the lounge.

Business travelers appreciate the many guest room amenities at the JW Marriott Mexico City. A two-line phone, speakerphone, voice mail and data ports make it easy to stay in touch with the office. A television with cable/satellite TV service includes an all-news channel and in-room movies. Newspapers are delivered to the room Monday through Friday.

Full kitchens and wet bars are available in some rooms and all rooms include a minibar stocked with refreshments for convenient access. Personal amenities include hairdryers, bathrobes, iron and ironing boards and in-room safes. “We are freshening the rooms this year with new duvets and tables,” says Garibay. “We are also including a package of luxurious personal amenities in the room.”

The hotel recently renovated its onsite Business Center, which helps travelers work more efficiently and productively. Services include faxing, photocopying, overnight shipping and Internet access.

No visit to the JW Marriott Mexico City would be complete without a relaxing visit to the outdoor pool or the solarium, health club, whirlpool and sauna. The hotel’s health club was recently upgraded to offer an even more luxurious setting for guests.

“Our variety of restaurants and lounges allows travelers and their guests to relax over a fine meal or just a light bite,” says Garibay. The hotel’s JW Italian is an onsite restaurant with an international menu. Other facilities include the Pergamino coffee shop, Lobby bar with complimentary coffee in the lobby and 24-hour room service.

Hotel services include a laundry valet, hair salon/barber, concierge, gift shop/newsstand and child care. Onsite parking is available.

Avis Rental Car reservation is available through concierge desk, making it easy to visit nearby attractions like the Anthropological Museum, Chapultepec Castle, Pyramids-Archeological Site, San Angel Flea Market, Xochilmilco-Floating Gardens and the Zona Rosa (Pink Zone) shopping and entertainment district. Two golf courses, Club de Golf Chapultepec and Club de Golf Churubusco Country Club are also located with in 10 km of the hotel.

Naked Boys Singing, the Cats of gay theater, is celebrating its 400th year off-Broadway. I’m proud to have had a hand in the show, although a hand was really not what I had hoped to put in. NBS, as the director is fond of calling it (this makes it sound more like an all-news network than an all-nude musical), was an act of desperation, put together by the leadership of a gay Hollywood theater company who found that audiences wouldn’t go to see a gay show unless they knew there would be some gay or straight or alive and breathing flesh to look at. Serious multiethnic cries for understanding just didn’t draw without a really big hanging garden of forbidden fruit.

So the show’s creator and director, Robert Schrock, said, Let’s meet the enemy head on, and I mean that literally. Naked Boys Singing–the title said it all. And the audiences fought each other to get in. Many years later naked boys are still unveiling themselves nightly on stages in cities around the world.

Among the many strange phenomena that have followed is the acceptance of NBS as a girls’-night-out, Chippendales sort of thing, although none of that kind of business occurs in the show. It’s a bunch of gay guys in mostly gay situations, including a love affair and, in its first production at least, a song about endless testing in a hospital. The fact that NBS is basically a gay show hasn’t seemed to hurt it with a straight audience.

The abrupt change from the air-conditioned bus my wife and I had been cradled in for the past 14 hours overnight from Oaxaca to the dripping heat of late morning Cancun was murder. Ceiling fans roaring mercilessly in the compact main bus terminal provided some relief. We set to work straddling our bags in front of a pay phone and started dropping coins in a greedy slot. No answer to the first number. The second was no longer in service. The third was now a residential number. The fourth hotel we called from our recommended list no longer existed. It had closed nearly a year earlier.

How could that be? I’d planned so carefully but hadn’t called long distance to check the hotel information. After all, it had been barely a couple of months since the newsletter back issues had arrived in the mail. I’d devoured them hungrily, my heart burning bright with hopes and plans for our first trip to Cancun together. Years had passed since my last visit.

My wife had never been to the cool white sands and palm-lined beaches that beckoned from travel magazine photos and slick TV commercials. More family members were arriving in a couple of days – booked into the high-rent district that the resort area sported so proudly along gleaming stretches of creamy softness lapped by azure waves. Their “$1200 dollars for five days” hotel tab was more than out of my league. We were here in Mexico for more than a month’s stay with three weeks of our time and at least two more cities still ahead. Those prices would bankrupt us and I hate washing dishes on vacation.

But my promised leads of affordable hotels in Mexico’s highest-priced city wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on. There wasn’t a moment to lose. “Get me a phone book!”, I barked to Doris. A binder of dog-eared yellow pages appeared. For the next 30 minutes I thumbed, scribbled, dialed and cursed as one by one the failures mounted and my change purse thinned. And this was only the first hour of a ten-day planned stay in Cancun. “At least it can’t get much worse”, I thought. Boy, was I wrong.

Thus began my stint as a researcher/writer for a “Mexico-content Newsletter”. Each month as subscribers open their e-mails to read the latest newsletter, they looked for accurate, insightful, first-hand information that hopefully would fuel their dreams for a new life or at least a paying adventure south of the border where the weather, food (and often the women) are hotter than where they were now. My disappointment, frustration and panic that morning in Cancun fueled my desire to e-mail the former editor, spouting, “I could provide you with better, more updated information than this!”

“Okay, so show me”, she replied by e-mail.

And did I ever with a detailed article on Merida, in the Yucatan. A crisp, slightly humorous Oaxaca piece followed a little later and finally a timely Cancun report after sending in a voluminous feed on central Mexico City. I dug up info on 55 jobs for that issue. It was a monster! That was in 1999. As I’ve wormed my way incessantly through central Mexico from the cactus and scrub clad stretches of the Yucatan through Mexico City and Toluca’s chilly highlands and down to sparkling “Acapulco Diamante”, I carefully documented the best and worst, endured vampire bats, gut-wrenching bugs, biting flies and uncovered both the delightful and dangerous aspects of living, working and enjoying our vast southern neighbors. Being able to speak Spanish was at least three tractor-trailer loads of help to me.

Why? For mere coin of the republic? No. Sooner or later, if they hadn’t already been, subscribers were going to go to Mexico. It was my job and my pleasure to make sure they were as prepared as possible when they did. Not “if” they went – WHEN they went. No question about it. And sooner rather than later, if I had anything to say about it. “They were tall words from a stranger – weren’t they?” Well, yes they were, but I wasn’t a “stranger” any longer. I’ve been writing travel, destination and foreign food and cultural pieces ever since. Look around you, no matter where you live stories abound. Look at your surroundings with a fresh eye. Write about what you see. Become a travel writer without even leaving home – at first. Need a starting point? “10 Tips for Writing Exotic Articles About Where You Live” at: http://EzineArticles.com/?id=72713 may help.

Prof. Larry M. Lynch is a bi-lingual copywriter, expert author and photographer specializing in business, travel, food and education-related writing in South America. His work has appeared in Transitions Abroad, South American Explorer, Escape From America, Mexico News and Brazil magazines. He now lives in Colombia and teaches at a university in Cali.

Mexico is getting a new airline and if the carrier meets all expectations it will go a long way in helping Mexican air traffic double over just the next three years. Volaris Airlines, started by Mexican billionaires Carlos Slim and Emilio Azcarraga, is expecting to take its first flight on March 13, 2006. Volaris may impact the airline industry well beyond Mexico especially if its aggressive expansion plans work out.

With the Mexican government in the process of divesting its interest in two airlines, Aero Mexico and Mexicana Airlines, start up carriers are poised to jump in and provide service as fares drop and demand surges. Up to now, the highly controlled Mexican airline industry has put a damper on customer demand as artificially high prices and a restricted market have kept customers away. Volaris Airlines, along with competing start up airline, Interjet, are expected to quickly reshape the Mexican airline industry beginning this year.

Volaris is planning to serve at least six Mexican cities and eventually provide service between Mexican and U.S. destinations. No word how all of this will impact wannabe start up Mexus Airlines, currently operating as a “paper carrier” with no concrete plans [or funding] to start flying.

Volaris plans on flying 16 A319 aircraft and has an option on 40 A320 aircraft. TACA International Airlines, based in El Salvador, will hold a minority stake in the airline. If all goes well with Volaris, expect the Mexican airline industry to go through a shake up similar to what the U.S. airline industry has experienced.

Source: Houston Chronicle, January 13, 2006

Copyright 2006 — Matthew Keegan is the owner of a successful article writing, web design, and marketing business based in North Carolina, USA. He manages several sites including the Corporate Flight Attendant Community and JetEmployment. Please visit The Article Writer to review selections from his portfolio.

As the last edge of sun slipped into the Sea of Cortez on a Saturday night in October, the Old Port corner of Puerto Peñasco, Mexico, kicked into high gear. Bunches of sunburned tourists rolled in, fresh from the beach, poring over vendors’ seashell necklaces and slipping into open-air cafes for fish tacos and margaritas. It was a  classic seaside resort town scene: casual, small and quaint.
   But peer west from the water’s edge, toward Puerto Peñasco’s extended arm, Sandy Beach, and you see a starkly different vista taking shape: a jagged wall of a dozen massive new condo-hotel resorts, in varying states of construction, rising toward the sky like a new Cancún.
   To the crowds of sun-loving tourists who are now flocking here from the United States, the development is a welcome new addition to Puerto Peñasco, or Rocky Point, as it’s called in English. The town - blessed with a surreal desert-meets-sea landscape, balmy year-round temperatures, English-speaking expatriates and an intact Old Port fishing village - has lured a mix of Arizona retirees and spring break revelers for years. Now, with its growing crop of new restaurants and upscale resorts that please middle-American tastes and budgets, Rocky Point is a draw to more vacationers.
   “Every week, there are more visitors,” said Germán Palacio Jiménez, who runs the Point, Malecón Fundadores, 200, (entrées $10 to $14; all prices are in dollars), a year-old waterfront seafood spot. “We’ve had customers from Colorado, New Mexico - even New York.” Other new places offer everything from Mexican fusion to the European cafe fare of Coffee’s Haus, Boulevard Benito Juárez, 216B; (52-638) 388-1065. The most expensive meal is $7.
   Although the narrow beaches here are coarse and beige - more like New Jersey than the Yucatán - this is the closest shoreline to Arizona, just 225 miles from Phoenix. And the town, an hour south of the border, is in Mexico’s free zone so tourists from the United States need no special permits.
   “This place is like the next San Diego, but with bigger bang for your buck,” said Mike Callaway, 48, a government employee from Tucson. He was sipping a Corona on a recent afternoon at the Sonoran Sun, where he paid $230 a night for his suite. The property is one of three new luxury Sonoran Resorts on Sandy Beach  that are also hotels.
   Real estate prices are still affordable compared with those of other beach resorts, making it relatively easy to snag a beachfront condo. The Sun’s rental manager, Roberto García, said that the 228 units sold out in seven hours last summer at an average of $300,000 each. That’s the typical price for a waterfront condo, with annual appreciation rates of about 25 percent in the last two years, said Brad Henderson, sales manager for Coldwell Banker.
   Meanwhile, plans for Puerto Peñasco and its surrounding deserts continue to expand. There are more than 40 large-scale developments in construction or expansion, plus three new golf courses and six more due.
   A small airport for charter flights now offered by Westwind Air Service (each flight is priced separately) reopened in September after a $2.5 million renovation; an international airport has a projected opening date of 2008. Also being built is a scenic coastal highway that will link Puerto Peñasco with cities to the north and south.

When you go on vacation, your risk of exposure to fraud and identity theft may increase. A few minutes of planning before you travel can help reduce the risk that a fraudster will ruin your vacation. Here are some tips to help you avoid any nasty surprises
• Clean out your wallet. Remove unnecessary credit cards, your Social Security card, and other unneeded documents that could compromise your identity if lost or stolen while on vacation.

• Photocopy or make a list of the remaining contents of your wallet. Keep it in a secure and locked location or with a trusted individual at home whom you can contact in case your wallet is lost or stolen.

• Do not leave your wallet or any documents containing personal information in your hotel room unattended. Use a hotel safe when available.

• Use traveler’s checks or credit cards for payment. Leave your checkbook in a secure locked place at home.

• Use credit cards instead of debit cards. This reduces your vulnerability to having your checking account emptied while you are on vacation.

• Guard your credit card receipts and car rental agreements, particularly if they contain your full credit card number.

• If you plan on using an ATM card during your vacation, use one that does not have debit card privileges (for example one that requires a PIN and does not contain a Visa or MasterCard logo). You can ask your bank to change an ATM/debit card to one that is “ATM only.” It’s best to use ATM machines found at banks or credit unions and that are in well-lit areas.

• Ask your Post Office or a trusted neighbor to hold your mail for you. Mail that is left in an unlocked mailbox is a goldmine for identity thieves.

• If you are bringing your laptop with you, be very careful when using it to access online banking or other password-protected services from wi-fi networks. Be sure to use wi-fi “hotspots” that are secure.

• If you are using cyber-cafés or other public access Internet facilities rather than bringing your laptop with you, be aware that keyloggers (software that can track your keystrokes) may be tracking you.