lifestyle, travel This is Cozumel

Two giant US-owned hotel groups rumored to be planning new projects in Cozumel are remaining tight-lipped and refusing to confirm any details.

Local newspapers have claimed a Sheraton complex is being built on the island and that AMResorts is also planning two hotels.

 

Yet, in interviews with This is Cozumel, this month, neither hotel group would confirm they have any concrete plans.

Various Mexican media reports, at the end of March and beginning of April, claimed construction had started on a new Sheraton hotel in the protected Marine Park area on the island's south-west coast.

The articles said the works had subsequently been closed down by authorities, allegedly due to damaging mangroves and closing the public road without permission.

However, when This is Cozumel asked Starwood Hotels and Resorts - the New York-based owner of Sheraton - about the construction, Laura Canepa, the group's spokesperson for Latin America, would not confirm any details nor say if the work in the Marine Park is for one of their hotels.

Cozumel Sheraton
Rumored Sheraton location.

 

Canepa said, "We are in talks and open to the possibility of a hotel [in Cozumel]," but, "due to confidentiality contracts we have with different developers we cannot be specific and give details for our plans."

With regard to Starwood's environmental policy for building new hotels, their Mexican spokesperson, Aletia Salas Fernández, said the hotel group always complies with local laws and works hard to be eco-friendly, pointing to the example of energy saving campaigns in their hotel range.

Starwood's publicly available Environmental Sustainability Policy says they seek to reduce the impact of their hotels and conserve "natural resources", but Salas would not say if this could specifically protect mangroves if they open a hotel on the island.

Aside from rumors about Sheraton, local paper, El Periódico de Quintana Roo, published a separate article about AMResorts, at the end of March.

AMResorts is part of the Pennsylvania-based Apple Leisure Group that owns airline USA3000 and package vacation company, Apple Vacations.

It manages a range of resort brands and has more than 25 hotels around Mexico and the Caribbean, including Secrets Capri Riviera Cancun and Dreams Cancun Resort and Spa on the mainland, not far from Cozumel.

In their March story, El Periódico de Quintana Roo reported AMResorts' President, Alejandro Zozaya-Gorostiza, as saying the group plans an investment of $65 million in two hotels on the island, one to be built new and the other by buying and renovating an existing hotel.

Even so, when asked by This is Cozumel about the news, a spokesperson for AMResorts in Mexico City admitted they are interested in opening a hotel in Cozumel, but said for the moment there is nothing "tangible" and denied Zozaya had said they will invest $65 million.

Visit our Places To Stay section for more information about Cozumel hotels.

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