Outside the “Safe Bubble” of All-Inclusive Resorts in México

(Photo by Larry Syverson via Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED)

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“Super cheap” is one of the first things tourists have to say about visiting México. In May 2026 alone, 8.36 million tourists visited México, with many staying at some of México’s most popular all-inclusive resorts.

For American and Canadian tourists, the appeal is clear: why spend more on a vacation at home when a flight to México and a stay at a beautiful resort with unlimited food, drinks, and activities are “cheaper”?

While tourists treat Mexico as a discount destination, their “cheap” worry-free vacations come at the expense of fragile ecosystems and the exploitation of local communities.

The Allure of All-Inclusive Resorts

The Riviera Maya, located in the southern state of Quintana Roo, is home to some of México’s most popular resort areas, including Cancún, Playa del Carmen, Tulum, and Akumal. Its warm climate and turquoise beaches attract many tourists every year seeking a tropical gateway. 

Among the most popular resort chains in the region is Xcaret, known for its “All-Fun Inclusive” concept, which grants guests from any of its 12 hotels ultimate access to its 8 massive adventure and eco-archaeological parks, trips to famous archaeological zones, and ferry rides to nearby islands. 

Xcaret promotes itself as “the most emblematic place in México.” Guests can immerse themselves in both the natural beauty and vibrant culture of México all within a single location. What sets Xcaret apart from other all-inclusive resorts is that many of the region’s natural wonders are actually owned and managed by the resort itself. Guests can explore privatized natural wonders, like cenotes (sinkholes), or encounter wildlife in a private tropical jungle. 

It has everything a tourist would love to see in México without ever having to leave the resort, and, of course, interacting with people outside the resort boundaries. Tourists can savour what feels like, and is marketed as, an authentic experience of México with the convenience of staying within the resort’s bubble.

The “Safe Bubble” of Quintana Roo

When planning a trip to México, many tourists consider safety. 

All-inclusive resorts were carefully designed to be some of the safest places for tourists. Key resort areas like the Riviera Maya, Los Cabos, and Puerto Vallarta are marketed as some of the safest destinations in the country. Here, inside this “safe bubble,” most tourists are expected to stay within the main resort zones, which are purposely built and protected for a luxury experience.

México’s government and tourism sector have also long recognized the importance of keeping resort zones “secure,” establishing dedicated tourism security patrols and tourist police units trained to assist international visitors. In 2025, the governor of Quintana Roo deployed over 7,000 additional troops and police to the Riviera Maya. This level of military force, usually reserved for anti-cartel activities in México, is all just a marketing exercise, designed to demonstrate clearly and unequivocally to tourists that resort areas in México are just as safe as ever. 

As so many traveller blogs painfully like to remind, “[t]he only crimes that have been reported [in resort areas] are domestic violence and low-level fraud.” Tourists themselves are not typically the victims; “it’s almost always a local.” 

The contrast could not be starker. Earlier this year in February, the Mexican army killed Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, México’s most wanted man and leader of the Jalisco New Generation (CJNG) drug cartel. When the cartel responded with retaliatory violence, burning vehicles and blocking highways in Puerto Vallarta, tourists in their “safe bubble” posted on their social media accounts of seeing smoke outside their resorts while sipping on margaritas.

Mexican authorities will go to such lengths to keep resort guests safe, yet provide little help to those facing real danger in their own communities. The number of disappearances has increased in recent years in the Riviera Maya. Tourists are always kept at a distance from the everyday realities of local communities. 86-year-old resident Pastora Santos shares her frustration that: “Over in Cancún, even close by here, as far as Tulum, in Playa del Carmen, a lot of things happen: they say people are killed, people are robbed, children go missing.”

Locals Playing a Character in Someone Else’s Vacation

Until 1970, resort cities in Quintana Roo did not exist. Quintana Roo was not even a state yet. Construction for a big resort area began around 1970. A group inside the Bank of México wanted to build a tourist resort destination from scratch to funnel American tourist dollars into México.

With federal funds and loans from the Inter-American Development Bank, it began purchasing more than 12,000 hectares of coastline in Quintana Roo — the perfect place to entice American tourists without requiring tourists to encounter the “real México.” 

The creation of Quintana Roo as a resort destination has resulted in the separation of the main tourist zone from local residential areas located far away from the tourist zone. Workers at resorts often commute from nearby cities because affordable housing is scarce near the tourism hubs. Employment at all-inclusive resorts is often low-wage, concentrated in physically demanding labour, and seasonal to prevent workers from forming unions and demanding protections. 

Workers are expected to make the guests’ experience feel effortless. Ultimately, México is treated less as a place with real people and more as a theme park. 

Deceiving “Eco-Tourism”

In the entire process of transforming coastal Mexico into a theme park, ecosystems are destroyed. Xcaret has been widely associated with the origins of mass “eco-tourism.” The BBC described Xcaret as a destination that helped demonstrate the potential of sustainable tourism for a mass audience.

Despite its stated values of “making smart choices that balance people, the planet, and prosperity”, Xcaret has already faced criticism for altering delicate Riviera Maya ecosystems and deforesting an entire native jungle to build massive tourist infrastructure without complete or prior environmental impact permits. 

Despite its documented ecocide, Xcaret will not stop expanding. In 2024, Greenpeace México criticized a proposed Xcaret tourism megaproject in Santa Elena, Yucatán. According to Greenpeace, the project would include nine 18-story hotels and require the clearing of nearly 165,000 trees from the Maya forest. The proposed development would consume more than 22 times the annual volume allocated for urban water use in Santa Elena, where water access is already limited.

The new tourism project is planned for an area where 96% of the population identifies as Maya. As a result, Indigenous Maya communities are being pushed away from desirable areas to make way for tourism development.

Devouring Indigenous Maya Culture

Xcaret has a history of appropriating Maya symbols and cultural practices, using them to make the Riviera Maya and Xcaret appealing to tourists. Anthropologist Gilberto Avilez Tax coined the term “Xcaret-ización” to refer to this commodification and distortion of Maya culture. Taxe writes that, “In the Xcaret-ization of the Peninsula, everything is for sale, everything is purchasable, including maps and geographies of history, 19th-century plantations and mansions, local cuisines, and, horror of horrors, even the cenotes.”

Community members of the Maya School in the U Kúuchil K Ch’i’ibalo’on Community Center argue that the traditional school system in Quintana Roo is designed to erase the memory and way of life of the Maya people, training young people “to serve tourists.” They describe this as a “cruel strategy” that forces Maya people to leave their communities to work in tourist zones that trivialize and commercialize Maya identity for the enjoyment of tourists.

In 2022, El Gran Consejo Maya de Quintana Roo, which represents Maya communities in the state, also accused Xcaret of appropriating sacred and traditional Maya elements into its parks and promotional materials without community consent. Xcaret turns living Maya traditions and livelihoods into staged, romanticized performances designed for tourist entertainment. 

Such displays are rooted in a colonial legacy that once sought to erase Maya culture altogether. As some critics have pointed out, the tourism industry celebrates the spectacle of Maya identity when it’s performed on stage, yet marginalizes and punishes Maya communities for existing in real life. 

Government Complicity and the Tren Maya

The Mexican government at the federal, state, and municipal levels have all promoted tourism as a development strategy, prioritizing international investment and resort construction over Indigenous land sovereignty. Public resources are frequently directed toward infrastructure that supports tourist zones, while surrounding Indigenous communities continue to face high living costs. Government officials, developers, wealthy Mexican investors, and transnational hotel chains can benefit from land sales and rising property values, while local communities bear the social and environmental costs.

In 2018, the newly elected President of México, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, announced the Tren Maya rail network project, describing it as “the most important public work in the world.” He claimed it would revitalize local communities and promote sustainable tourism. But it was nothing other than a complete environmental catastrophe. 

Tren Maya is a massive tourist railroad cutting directly through the Yucatán Peninsula to connect resorts, theme parks, and archaeological sites. At least 10 million trees were cut down or removed due to the construction of the Tren Maya. 87 percent of the deforested area was cleared in violation of environmental legislation. The deforestation destroyed the natural habitats of hundreds of species, including jaguars and spider monkeys. All these concerns were brought up to the government, yet they willingly continued the project despite all the protests. 

The construction also ruined the local waterway system and delicate underground cenote aquifer systems. Cenotes not only provide the only freshwater available to the entire Yucatán Peninsula, but also hold sacred spiritual and cultural importance for Maya communities.

Obrador said the railway would provide work in some of México’s poorest regions, but so far affected communities have not been compensated for the destruction caused by the Tren Maya. Furthermore, the project ended up far exceeding its budget and has only attracted 20% of projected passenger traffic since its recent inauguration. The Riviera Maya only awaits the tourists and the middle class who can afford to board the train.

Resistance Against New Projects

Across México, communities and environmental groups are pushing back against megaprojects. In Quintana Roo, sustained protests helped force the popular cruise ship company Royal Caribbean to abandon its plan to build a large water park in Mahahual. Environmental groups warned that it would devastate mangroves and endanger species such as sea turtles and jaguars near the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef. 

On the Yucatán Peninsula, similar outrage has erupted recently over the “Las Dunas” real estate and tourism complex at Chuburná Puerto, where activists from the collective Salvemos las Dunas and residents of Mérida have marched to demand a permanent halt to the construction that has already scarred some of the region’s best-preserved coastal dune systems. 

The collective argues that protecting the Chuburná Dunes means “defending a unique ecosystem, preserving species protected by law and maintaining a natural barrier that protects our communities from the effects of climate change and extreme weather events.” 

Although Profepa, México’s environmental enforcement agency, ordered a temporary suspension of work at Las Dunas after finding damage to protected flora and fauna, activists continue to call for the project’s outright cancellation and a full audit of the permits that allowed it to advance in the first place.

The Relentless Expansion of All-Inclusive Tourism

México’s resort tourism economy remains firmly capitalist and extractive. Even as one megaproject falls, others rise to take its place. Royal Caribbean may have abandoned its water park project in Mahahual, but the company has made it clear that it still intends to develop more private destinations elsewhere in México. 

This current model of tourism persists in México despite the known environmental and local impacts because land that once supported entire livelihoods is seen as more valuable as a resort site. 

Quintana Roo alone already hosts nearly 1,500 hotels and resorts. Construction permits for thousands of additional resorts and rooms continue to be processed. The promotion of these resorts has only intensified the need to create more hotels and further exacerbated the displacement of local communities.

Edited by Henry Stevens