Despite a range of negative news out of Mexico over the last few decades, Cancun's tourism and hotel industries are thriving. New hotels have been popping up in the area for years now and there seems to be no end to the expansion, which just means better tourism opportunities will pop up as well.

I don't spend a lot of time in Cancun, but I do spend a lot of time in the Yucatan; I usually make a stop in Cancun and occasionally spend a night or two. In the past couple of years, the proliferation of huge stacks of concrete with rebar sprouting in every direction and unfamiliar names on familiar grand(iose) entrance gates have made me feel like a recent arrival from a distant planet. If you doubt all the reports of Mexico's feat of defying a tenacious worldwide recesses ion and the scourge of drug-related violence to accomplish record tourist growth, you need look no further for evidence than the Caribbean island that put southern Mexico on the travel map in the first place.

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