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Friday, March 28, 2008

Why doesn’t anyone visit Huatulco?

By Jeremy Schwartz | Friday, March 28, 2008, 01:47 PM

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Back in the 1980’s, the coast of Oaxaca, with its phenomenal beaches and stunning geography, seemed set to be become the next Cancun. Government planners set aside 50,000 acres, moved the existing population to a neighboring town and formed the resort of Huatulco (pronounced Wa-TUL-Ko) in 1984.

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Generally regarded as cleaner, less tacky and cheaper than Cancun, Huatulco however has failed to catch on. Only about 20 percent of visitors are international and most weekends the resort is depressingly empty (a friend who visited over Semana Santa, Mexico’s holy week, couldn’t believe how few people were there.) One of the big problems with Huatulco is its isolation. It is served by a tiny airport with few international flights, and forget about to reach it by car from Oaxaca City or Acapulco. The former would take you through some of the toughest mountain driving in the country the latter would force you to drive over 300 speedbumps, according to Huatulco’s wikipedia entry. At one point, desperation over Huatulco’s desolation got so high, some floated the idea of changing its name to something more pronouncable for American and European mouths.

So now the Mexican government is basically calling for a do-over. It is spending nearly $1 billion to build a bigger airport, construct a superhighway to Oaxaca and reposition the resort on a scale similar to that of the Riviera Maya. The government is also aggressively courting hoteliers and says it has 2,000 new rooms planned.

I’ve never been to Huatulco, but for those who have been, what do you think of the proposed changes?

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