Cancún — Mexico's most visited resort destination, with over 6 million visitors annually — was a deliberate government creation, built from a mosquito-ridden sandbar in the early 1970s into a 22km hotel zone of international resorts along one of the Caribbean's finest beaches. The formula works: the Hotel Zone (Zona Hotelera) delivers an extraordinary combination of Caribbean beach quality (fine white sand, shallow turquoise water, excellent weather) with all-inclusive resort infrastructure, direct international flights, modern facilities and affordable prices that few Caribbean islands can match.
Cancún is also the ideal base for exploring the Yucatán Peninsula's extraordinary Mayan heritage — Chichén Itzá (2.5 hours), Tulum ruins (1.5 hours), the Cobá ruins (2 hours) and the cenote network (from 45 minutes south) are all accessible on day trips, and the 100km Riviera Maya corridor between Cancún and Tulum offers excellent resort alternatives at Playa del Carmen, Puerto Morelos and Akumal.
The Hotel Zone
Cancún's Hotel Zone is a narrow island shaped like a number 7, with its longer arm along the Caribbean coast (where the beach is finest and most resorts are located) and its shorter arm along the Laguna Nichupté (where watersports are based). The beaches of the Hotel Zone — Playa Langosta, Playa Tortugas and the long stretch fronting the main resort strip — are excellent by Caribbean standards: wide, white, sheltered and with reliably calm water. Hotel Zone beaches are technically public but accessed through resorts in practice.
Playa del Carmen & the Riviera Maya
Playa del Carmen, 68km south of Cancún, offers a more bohemian, European atmosphere than Cancún's resort strip — a cosmopolitan town of boutique hotels, independent restaurants and the famous pedestrian Quinta Avenida shopping street, fronting an excellent white-sand beach. It serves as the Riviera Maya's main town and ferry hub for Cozumel (the most popular diving destination in the Western Hemisphere, 45 minutes by ferry). The Riviera Maya corridor between Playa del Carmen and Tulum has some of Mexico's finest luxury boutique hotels, many set directly on excellent beaches.
Cozumel & Isla Mujeres
Cozumel — a flat, forested island 20km off the Yucatán coast — has the most famous diving in the Americas: the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef (the second-largest coral reef system in the world) runs along its western coast, and the Palancar Reef in particular is extraordinary. The combination of visibility (often 40m+), current-drift diving and sheer diversity of marine life makes Cozumel a destination for serious divers. Isla Mujeres, just 13km offshore from Cancún, is a small, car-free island of colourful colonial buildings, hammock bars and excellent beaches — a popular day trip and ferry ride from Cancún.
