Is Cancun Safe for Travel in 2018?

[WalnutBaron]

Here's a more detailed article on the shooting from jet skis onto the beach at Cancun.

Gunmen in Cancun Shoot at Beach from Jet Skis
by Jessica Puckett
Yesterday

• 109Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)109
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)

28


This post contains references to products from one or more of our advertisers. We may receive compensation when you click on links to those products. For an explanation of our Advertising Policy, visit this page.

Gunmen in Cancun, Mexico, shot at a beach vendor from jet skis in the water on Friday. The incident occurred in the middle of the resort city’s main beachfront hotel strip, and is thought to be the city’s first shooting of its kind.

Fortunately, there were no injuries. Authorities recovered four bullets from the scene on the beach, which was then closed off to the public, but they were not able to identify the gunmen or exactly who the target of the shooting might have been.

The shooting is the latest in a string of brutal incidents in Mexico, where violence related to drug cartels is creeping closer to tourist areas that have historically been generally safer than the rest of the country. Cancun has reported a total of 130 murders so far in 2018, with one particularly gruesome stretch earlier in April that saw 14 murders in 36 hours. That 36-hour window was the bloodiest timeframe the city has seen since 2004, according to The New York Post.

Earlier this week, a body of a man who had been shot was found lying face down in the water on a beach in Acapulco. And earlier in March, The US Consular Agency in Playa del Carmen was closed due to an unspecified “security threat” in the resort town. At the same time, the US Embassy in Mexico had issued a security alert, which barred all US government employees from traveling to Playa del Carmen. That alert has since been lifted.

Although the Embassy never said what exactly the threat was, there had been a bombing on a passenger ferry that runs between Playa del Carmen and Cozumel in February, which injured 25 people, including two Americans. Another explosive device on another ferry a week after that. It is still unclear what was behind those bombings.

 

[buzglyd]

Guns are illegal in Mexico. This is impossible!

 

[x3 skier]

Floatby shootings? What next, shots from a parasail? This is astounding but I still plan on PV next year.

Cheers

 

[PamMo]

I don't want to make light of this (I'd be shaken to the core if I was on the beach with my grandkids when this happened), but my initial reaction to this story when my sister told me about it was, "Do these bozos think they are 007?????" They are beyond ridiculous animals with guns (with my apologies to the Animal Kingdom).

Mexico has got to step up and crush these fartels and criminal boss wannabe's, or the tourism industry will crash. Again.

 

[PamMo]

Oops! Typo in my last post, but it may be karma. "Fartels" sounds appropriate for the "water scooter" gunmen.

 

[T-Dot-Traveller]

Mexico has got to step up and crush these fartels and criminal boss wannabe's, or the tourism industry will crash. Again.

PamMo - I know you said it was a typo - but perhaps accurate .

I had not read of the drive by jet ski story until now . MY reaction also is wannabe's . - Fartels - not the real thing .
BUT A PROBLEM : like a teen house party that gets out of control because every kid in town crashes it.


We have 2 February 2019 weeks booked in PV & we will be there .

 

[ilene13]

We just returned from Cancun on Wednesday. We drove downtown for dinner, to Puerto Morales for dinner, to XPLOR for the day, etc. There were no problems and Cancún was as wonderful as ever. We own at the Royal Sands and we walked all around the area. The RIU hotels are not in the nicest areas!

 

[TravelTime]

Deleted

 

[DannyTS]

This is interesting stats on number of murders by US city and per capita rate for all of 2017:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/02/19/homicides-toll-big-u-s-cities-2017/302763002/

It makes Cancun sound very scary with 113 people killed there as of April 12 (3.5 months):
http://www.miamiherald.com/article208720004.html

Firsts of all I agree with other TUGgers, one should exert caution when travelling. Concerning the numbers, 3 .5 months do not make a trend, only nice headlines. But even if you extrapolate for the year, it brings the average somewhere within the range of other US cities like NY, Los Angeles and under Chicago. Does it mean that as a tourist you have a high chance of dying in Chicago? I do not believe so. The question is rather what is the rate of tourists that die in one place or another. And we all know the answer to that: so low that it makes a higher probability to die while driving to work in your hometown.
For the sake of the local population though, i do hope that the situation in Mexico will improve.

 

[TravelTime]

Firsts of all I agree with other TUGgers, one should exert caution when travelling. Concerning the numbers, 3 .5 months do not make a trend, only nice headlines. But even if you extrapolate for the year, it brings the average somewhere within the range of other US cities like NY, Los Angeles and under Chicago. Does it mean that as a tourist you have a high chance of dying in Chicago? I do not believe so. The question is rather what is the rate of tourists that die in one place or another. And we all know the answer to that: so low that it makes a higher probability to die while driving to work in your hometown.
For the sake of the local population though, i do hope that the situation in Mexico will improve.

I agree with you. This is just showing the increase in the first 3 months of the year. Mexico had more murders last year than the entire USA. On a per capita basis, that was much higher than the USA since our population is massive compared to Mexico. I do not know the per capita basis of Cancun vs the other cities in the USA on this list. I would not go to many of the US cities on this list either - or if I did - I would certainly avoid many parts that are known for crime. On the other hand, I was surprised at how many major US cities had so few murders over an entire 12 months. There are really only a handful of US cities with a high murder rate. While LA has a high absolute murder rate, its per capita murder rate is low. Where I live in one of the largest cities in the USA, we have a low absolute and per capita murder rate.

I was in Cancun in January and I felt physically safe but I just canceled a trip to Cancun for May because I no longer feel safe knowing the recent crime wave is reaching tourist areas. I have been to Mexico many times in the past year (Cancun, Cozumel, Riviera Maya, Puerto Vallarta and Cabo San Lucas). The reason I do not feel physically safe in Cancun now is the hotel zone does not have strong security. Anyone can walk in pretty easily since they are individual hotels with public beaches, set up like Miami Beach, more or less. In fact, Cancun's hotel zone look a lot like Miami Beach did 20 years ago. If there were 113 murders in Miami Beach this year, I would not go there either so it is not a criticism of Mexico, per se, just my personal assessment of the security situation. If I had been planning to stay in a resort compound, I would probably go. But we were planning to stay in the hotel zone of Cancun.

P.S. I am 99.9% sure if we did go, we would be safe but I do not feel comfortable going anymore.

 

[TravelTime]

We just returned from Cancun on Wednesday. We drove downtown for dinner, to Puerto Morales for dinner, to XPLOR for the day, etc. There were no problems and Cancún was as wonderful as ever. We own at the Royal Sands and we walked all around the area. The RIU hotels are not in the nicest areas!

The RIU hotels are in the Cancun hotel zone. As I just mentioned in my last post, the Cancun hotel zone does not have a lot of security because it is a bunch of single hotels side by side with public beaches easily accessible by anyone. They are not the huge heavily guarded resort compounds found in Riviera Maya, Cabo and Puerto Vallarta areas.

 

[dioxide45]

The problem is if the local security forces don't get a handle on crime quickly, it will lead to more problems. Crime is starting to keep tourists away. As the tourists numbers start to drop, more people working in the tourist industry may get let go leading to unemployment. That leads people to do desperate things and perhaps turn to crime. Thus increasing crime even more and keeping more people away. It is a downward spiral that they need to get a grip on. While I don't really have any major concerns traveling to the well traveled tourist designations in Mexico such as Cancun, RM or Cabo, our major issue is with the police force. Even if you do have a problem, there is relaly no guaranty that they are there to protect you as they are often at the mercy of the drug cartels and are often unscrupulous themselves. While most often when in a major US city, you can at least in most cases trust the the cops are not out to get you too.

 

[Eric B]

Firsts of all I agree with other TUGgers, one should exert caution when travelling. Concerning the numbers, 3 .5 months do not make a trend, only nice headlines. But even if you extrapolate for the year, it brings the average somewhere within the range of other US cities like NY, Los Angeles and under Chicago. Does it mean that as a tourist you have a high chance of dying in Chicago? I do not believe so. The question is rather what is the rate of tourists that die in one place or another. And we all know the answer to that: so low that it makes a higher probability to die while driving to work in your hometown.
For the sake of the local population though, i do hope that the situation in Mexico will improve.

You make some very good points here. I think the best one is that I should really stop driving to work soon for my own health and safety! One more year to go...!

 

[DannyTS]

I agree with you. This is just showing the increase in the first 3 months of the year. Mexico had more murders last year than the entire USA. On a per capita basis, that was much higher than the USA since our population is massive compared to Mexico. I do not know the per capita basis of Cancun vs the other cities in the USA on this list. I would not go to many of the US cities on this list either - or if I did - I would certainly avoid many parts that are known for crime. On the other hand, I was surprised at how many major US cities had so few murders over an entire 12 months. There are really only a handful of US cities with a high murder rate. While LA has a high absolute murder rate, its per capita murder rate is low. Where I live in one of the largest cities in the USA, we have a low absolute and per capita murder rate.

I was in Cancun in January and I felt physically safe but I just canceled a trip to Cancun for May because I no longer feel safe knowing the recent crime wave is reaching tourist areas. I have been to Mexico many times in the past year (Cancun, Cozumel, Riviera Maya, Puerto Vallarta and Cabo San Lucas). The reason I do not feel physically safe in Cancun now is the hotel zone does not have strong security. Anyone can walk in pretty easily since they are individual hotels with public beaches, set up like Miami Beach, more or less. In fact, Cancun's hotel zone look a lot like Miami Beach did 20 years ago. If there were 113 murders in Miami Beach this year, I would not go there either so it is not a criticism of Mexico, per se, just my personal assessment of the security situation. If I had been planning to stay in a resort compound, I would probably go. But we were planning to stay in the hotel zone of Cancun.

P.S. I am 99.9% sure if we did go, we would be safe but I do not feel comfortable going anymore.

Again, i felt very safe around the Westin Lagunamar area. I am not sure why you mention the whole Mexico, it is not the purpose of this thread.


Did you go to NYC in the 80's? If you did you probably avoided certain areas. I think you are making a very good point, you would not visit certain parts of some cities in US.
Here is an article about NYC in 1980: 1814 homicides.

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/02/25/nyregion/1980-called-worst-year-of-crime-in-city-history.html

 

[TravelTime]

Again, i felt very safe around the Westin Lagunamar area. I am not sure why you mention the whole Mexico, it is not the purpose of this thread.


Did you go to NYC in the 80's? If you did you probably avoided certain areas. I think you are making a very good point, you would not visit certain parts of some cities in US.
Here is an article about NYC in 1980: 1814 homicides.

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/02/25/nyregion/1980-called-worst-year-of-crime-in-city-history.html

The 1970s and 1980s were dangerous in NYC. You are correct. Giuliani was tough on crime and cleaned it up in the 1990s+. This is what Cancun and all of Mexico needs. The only reason I brought up Mexico is because it is a country wide problem that is creeping into the tourist zones now. I lived in NYC for a couple of years in the late 1980s before it got cleaned up. And everyone I knew got mugged or robbed. Friends got car jacked at gunpoint. It was dangerous for locals and tourists in NYC in the 1980s. Times Square was not at all safe and it was completely different than now. I lived in upper, upper West Side in the 100s and there were sections that I was scared to walk through. It was dangerous for everyone and every time we went out at night, even in groups, we took a chance. It was fun but scary times.

 

[ilene13]

The RIU hotels are in the Cancun hotel zone. As I just mentioned in my last post, the Cancun hotel zone does not have a lot of security because it is a bunch of single hotels side by side with public beaches easily accessible by anyone. They are not the huge heavily guarded resort compounds found in Riviera Maya, Cabo and Puerto Vallarta areas.

There was security on the beach. We saw Federales riding ATV’s on the beach daily. I didn’t say that the RIU hotels were not in the hotel zone, they are just not in the nicest part of it.

 

[TravelTime]

There was security on the beach. We saw Federales riding ATV’s on the beach daily. I didn’t say that the RIU hotels were not in the hotel zone, they are just not in the nicest part of it.

That’s new since I was there a few months ago. When I was at the hotel zone in January, there was no security on the beach.

 

[DannyTS]

The 1970s and 1980s were dangerous in NYC. You are correct. Giuliani was tough on crime and cleaned it up in the 1990s+. This is what Cancun and all of Mexico needs. The only reason I brought up Mexico is because it is a country wide problem that is creeping into the tourist zones now. I lived in NYC for a couple of years in the late 1980s before it got cleaned up. And everyone I knew got mugged or robbed. Friends got car jacked at gunpoint. It was dangerous for locals and tourists in NYC in the 1980s. Times Square was not at all safe and it was completely different than now. I lived in upper, upper West Side in the 100s and there were sections that I was scared to walk through. It was dangerous for everyone and every time we went out at night, even in groups, we took a chance. It was fun but scary times.

it may take more than a Giuliani in Mexico, unfortunately.

That’s new since I was there a few months ago. When I was at the hotel zone in January, there was no security on the beach.

In early March there was indeed security on the beach (Federales).

 

[T-Dot-Traveller]

FYI -Mexican tourism data update .
from Travel Weekly.
Mexico -

2017 - 39 MILLION International visitors ( + 12% from prior year )

How many international tourists in :

Cancun-RM
Cabo Baja
Puerto Vallarta & Riviera Nayarit
Mazatlan
Acapulco
etc.

were killed by cartel violence ?

 

[DannyTS]

FYI -Mexican tourism data update .
from Travel Weekly.
Mexico -

2017 - 39 MILLION International visitors ( + 12% from prior year )

How many international tourists in :

Cancun-RM
Cabo Baja
Puerto Vallarta & Riviera Nayarit
Mazatlan
Acapulco
etc.

were killed by cartel violence ?

Indeed, it would defy any logic since the tourists are a major source of revenue for the locals including (indirectly i hope) for the cartels

 

[T-Dot-Traveller]

It was safer in Cancun today then on Yonge Street in Toronto
April 23 2018

 

[TravelTime]

All these comparisons do not make Cancun (or other parts of Mexico) safer. There are many places in the world that no longer feel safe due to them being terrorism targets like London, Paris, Istanbul and even NYC. Once I am at a place, even in Cancun (and other parts of Mexico), I usually feel safe, but not always. At least in the places I go in the US and Europe and most parts of the world, I don’t have the hotel people harassing me everyday. That is one of the the scariest and most uncomfortable parts of going to Mexico and staying in a timeshare there. I was completely unprepared for that and prefer to stay in hotels in Mexico or low key timeshares to avoid being harassed. Exiting the airport in Cancun and the other major tourist spots in Mexico is also really scary. I did not think my family could handle that part of the trip so I uninvited them from my last trip. I think we should stop the comparisons to the USA. I will not compare anymore because it is irrelevant. If this thread is about Cancun safety, we should be honest about Cancun and not try to cover it up or falsely make readers feel like there is little risk of crime. The murders are only a small part of the danger in Cancun and the surrounding areas on the Yucatán peninsula.

 

[T-Dot-Traveller]

. I was completely unprepared for that and prefer to stay in hotels in Mexico or low key timeshares to avoid being harassed.

If you decide to visit Mexico again .

Raintree Club Regina - Cancun - non AI - nice smaller TS ( under 200 units ) We stayed there in Feb 2015 / RCI exchange - no sales pressure .
I hear the same about their location in the Puerto Vallarta - Marina when we stay next door at Mayan Palace .

Vidanta - Mayan has great non AI resorts & we own there , BUT if you are uncomfortable with pressure to go to a sale presentation , I would avoid them .

 

[PigsDad]

All these comparisons do not make Cancun (or other parts of Mexico) safer. There are many places in the world that no longer feel safe due to them being terrorism targets like London, Paris, Istanbul and even NYC. Once I am at a place, even in Cancun (and other parts of Mexico), I usually feel safe, but not always. At least in the places I go in the US and Europe and most parts of the world, I don’t have the hotel people harassing me everyday. That is one of the the scariest and most uncomfortable parts of going to Mexico and staying in a timeshare there. I was completely unprepared for that and prefer to stay in hotels in Mexico or low key timeshares to avoid being harassed. Exiting the airport in Cancun and the other major tourist spots in Mexico is also really scary. I did not think my family could handle that part of the trip so I uninvited them from my last trip. I think we should stop the comparisons to the USA. I will not compare anymore because it is irrelevant. If this thread is about Cancun safety, we should be honest about Cancun and not try to cover it up or falsely make readers feel like there is little risk of crime. The murders are only a small part of the danger in Cancun and the surrounding areas on the Yucatán peninsula.

"Feeling safe" is relative and subjective, so I think comparisons to other parts of the world is extremely relevant and shouldn't be swept under the rug, as you suggest. Comparisons give someone who hasn't experienced Mexico or certain parts of Mexico a reference level to help them evaluate the perceived safety compared to places that they may be familiar with. I don't see anything wrong with that, and I find it quite useful. JMHO.

Kurt

 

[DannyTS]

. At least in the places I go in the US and Europe and most parts of the world, I don’t have the hotel people harassing me everyday. That is one of the the scariest and most uncomfortable parts of going to Mexico and staying in a timeshare there. I was completely unprepared for that and prefer to stay in hotels in Mexico or low key timeshares to avoid being harassed.

We have to make a distinction between safety and aggressive selling. I have been to many parts of the world were aggressive selling is part of the culture but that is not related to safety.

My experience at Westin Lagunamar Cancun was quite the opposite actually. In March we went to the TS presentation (we got $175 resort credit). Of course my wife and I discussed before that we were not going to buy anything. To my shock, towards the end of the presentation my wife said that she really wanted to buy unless i veto-ed. Part shock and confusion, part that i did not want to offend my wife in front of other people, i did not show much verbal opposition and we signed the papers.

We went back to the room, discussed it extensively over the next couple of days, did more research (thanks TUG!) and decided to rescind. We went back to their office (third or fourth day after the presentation) prepared for the whole singing and dancing and ready for a terrible experience. We actually made sure we ate before, just to show you what we were prepared for. The sales people looked disappointed when we told them what we were there for but to our surprise they acted cordially. They gave us a sheet of paper to sign, they signed, made a copy for us and that was it, we got out in less then 5 minutes! The salesperson there (Richie) even mentioned few times "do not worry, this is Westin". I was actually really impressed.


I am not going to speculate on your motives but I see that you are suggesting that those that do not agree with you on this matter are less than honest. Thank you.