It’s Safe to Vacation in the Mayan Riviera so Don't Feel Hesitant to vacation with us, in fact it's safer here than many areas back in the USA.... and the Statistics prove it!

  Our Villas are perfect for family vacations and that is whom our customers have been for years....don't let the media make you feel ill at ease for planning a family vacation to the Mayan Riviera. Our villas are in a small gated residential area with 24/7 security it is VERY SAFE and a great place to bring your family... the whole Mayan Riviera is 1000 of miles from the trouble areas in the north.

  Here are some excerpts from Newspapers, Statistics, and Travel Experts opinions on the safety of traveling to Mexico's Cancun and Mayan Riviera Tourist Areas.

 Are Americans safer in Mexico than at home?
  (Excerpts from Lonely Planet)

What you don’t get from most reports in the US is statistical evidence that Americans are less likely to face violence on average in Mexico than at home, particularly when you zero in on Mexico’s most popular travel destinations. For example, the gateway to Disney World, Orlando, saw 7.5 murders per 100,000 residents in 2010 per the FBI; this is higher than Cancun with a rate of 1.83, per a Stanford University report.

Before you nix Mexico altogether, consider these five things:

1. Mexico may be more dangerous than the US overall, but not for Americans.
According to FBI crime statistics, 4.8 Americans per 100,000 were murdered in the US in 2010. The US State Department reports that 120 Americans of the 5.7 million who visited Mexico last year were murdered, which is a rate of 2.1 of 100,000 visitors. Regardless of whether they were or weren’t connected to drug trafficking, which is often not clear, it’s less than half the US national rate.

2. Texans are twice as safe in Mexico, and three times safer than in Houston.
Looking at the numbers, it might be wise for Texans to ignore their Public Safety department’s advice against Mexico travel. Five per 100,000 Texans were homicide victims in 2010, per the FBI. Houston was worse, with 143 murders, or a rate of 6.8 – over three times the rate for Americans in Mexico.

3. And it’s not just Texas.
It’s interesting comparing each of the countries’ most dangerous cities. New Orleans, host city of next year’s Super Bowl, broke its own tourism record last year with 8 million visitors. Yet the Big Easy has ten times the US homicide rate, close to triple Mexico’s national rate.
Few go to Ciudad Juarez, a border town of 1.3 million that saw 8 to 11 murders a day in 2010 (accounts differ – CNN went with 8). It’s unlikely to ever be a tourism hostpot, but things have been quietly improving there. By 2011, CNN reported, the homicide rate dropped by 45%, and the first six weeks of this year saw an additional 57% drop, per this BBC story.
If that trend in Juarez continues all year, and it might not, the number of homicides would have dropped from over 3000 in 2010 to 710 in 2012. Meanwhile New Orleans’ homicide rate is increasing, up to 199 murders last year, equivalent to 736 in a city with the population of Juarez.

4. By the way, most of Mexico is not on the State Department’s travel warning.
The best of Mexico, in terms of travel, isn’t on the warning. The US warns against ‘non-essential travel’ to just four of Mexico’s 31 states (all in the north: Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango and Tamaulipas). The warning goes on to recommend against travel to select parts of other states, but not including many popular destinations such as Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, the Riviera Nayarit, Cancun, Cozumel and Tulum.
Meanwhile, 13 states are fully free from the State Department’s warning, including Baja California Sur, Yucatan, Mexico City, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Guanajuato and others.

5. Malia Obama ignored the Texas advice.
Of all people, President Obama and first lady said ‘OK’ to their 13-year-old daughter’s spring break destination this year: Oaxaca. Then Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum made snide remarks over that, perhaps overlooking that Oaxaca state has a smaller body count from the drug war than his home state’s murder rate (Oaxaca’s 4.39 per 100,000 to Pennsylvania’s 5.2).
Oaxaca state, not on the US travel warning, is famed for its colonial city, Zapotec ruins and emerging beach destinations like Huatulco. Lonely Planet author Greg Benchwick even tried grasshoppers with the local mezcal (Malia apparently stuck with vanilla shakes.)

So, can you go to Mexico?
Yes. As the US State Department says, ‘millions of US citizens safely visit Mexico each year.’ Last year, when I took on the subject for CNN, one commenter suggested Lonely Planet was being paid to promote travel there. No we weren’t. We took on the subject simply because – as travelers so often know – there is another story beyond the perception back home, be it Vietnam welcoming Americans in the ’90s or Colombia’s dramatic safety improvements in the ’00s. And, equally as importantly, Mexico makes for some of the world’s greatest travel experiences – it’s honestly why I’m in this line of work.
So yes, you can go to Mexico, just as you can go to Texas, or New Orleans, or Orlando, or the Bahamas. It’s simply up to you to decide whether you want to. Read More....

Despite what you hear, it's safe: Mexican governor visits Texas, calls for more tourist activity
  (Excerpts from Culturemap Austin)

Yes, there’s all that scary (and true) news about warring drug cartels. But Mexico is a big country, as is the U.S. There are places I wouldn’t go in the United States, and places I wouldn’t go in Mexico. But those are few and far between.

Roberto Borge, governor of Quintana Roo, the Mexican state that includes Cancun, visited Austin May 16 to encourage Texans to head south.

“Mexico has 112 million citizens,” he said. “Are there more good Mexicans than bad? Yes. There are more than 2,500 municipalities in Mexico, and the majority of violence is in 12 of them. Has one tourist been involved in that violence? Not one.”

The state of Quintana Roo, he added, is bigger than the entire country of Belize. It is situated 1,000 miles from the state of Nuevo Leon, which the Department of State advises U.S. citizens to avoid, and 1,800 miles from Tijuana, where travel warnings say to "exercise caution."

Earlier this year, Mexican authorities asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to make warnings specific to certain towns, highways and areas. That gave visitors information they could use to make choices, Borge said.

According to Borge, FBI figures on violent offenses show that in 2010, there were 227 in New York City, 184 in Chicago, 90 in Houston; that's compared to 80 in Cancun and 3 in Cozumel. Read More....

Viewpoint: Time to look beyond Mexico drug violence
 (Excerpts from BBC News)

Bad Press - Mexico's public relations problems have not been limited to security.

Three years ago, Mexico bore the brunt of the global H1N1 or swine flu crisis. Some reports initially called it the Mexican influenza, even though the epidemic may well have started elsewhere in North America.

Despite high rates of crime and violence elsewhere in Latin America, the media tend to focus relentlessly on Mexico's drug war. The murder rate is nearly 20 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, but this is significantly lower than in Brazil, Colombia, and Puerto Rico.

According to the latest analysis by the Trans-Border Institute, drug-related homicides were down by some 19% compared with the same time last year. If this pattern continues, 2012 will see fewer drug killings than in the two previous years which saw admittedly high levels of violence with some 15,000 and 16,700 murders respectively. Such a change would be welcome in itself but it would also reflect that there is much more to Mexico than drug violence.

While Mexico is on the list of travel warnings issued by the US state department, along with Iran, Algeria and Syria, it is still the number one destination for US citizens travelling abroad. There were more than 20 million visits by Americans last year. And an estimated one million US citizens reside permanently in Mexico. Read More...

Peter Greenberg: Why I Travel To Mexico
Peter Greenberg is Travel Editor for CBS News, appearing on CBS This Morning, CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley, and CBS Sunday Morning.
(Excerpts from petergreenberg.com)

In his own words:  “Let me state something from the outset. I am not an unabashed apologist (supporter) for Mexico, or its spokesman or an endorser. I am writing this as a veteran traveler to Mexico who has been going down there since 1973 without a single incident. I am growing tired, and somewhat impatient with expressions of concern or worry — as well intentioned as they may be — about my traveling to Mexico. Every time I am about to fly there — to Cancun, to Cabo, to Ixtapa, to Mexico City and many other locations — my friends, and sometimes even strangers advise me to ‘be careful’, ‘be safe’ or worse… ‘watch out.’

Watch out for what? great people? great weather? great service? affordable, memorable experiences? 

Peter goes on to talk about his view of the current Mexico drug war:

“The bottom line here is that Americans are NOT being targeted in this drug war. Travel and Tourism is too big an economic factor — too crucial to the Mexican economy and to millions of Mexican jobs — to allow that to happen.

There are two realities here: the multi-billion dollar drug business is not going to evaporate as long as demand — most of it from the United States — remains at record levels. And the second reality — travel and tourism remain robust in Mexico.“

   “The bottom line, as travel agents and wholesalers are well aware, is that all the most popular tourist areas are demonstrably safe. But just as you wouldn’t feel comfortable sending a client to certain neighborhoods of New York, Washington, Miami, Los Angeles or Dallas, there are parts of Mexico that you would be wise to have them avoid. "

We did our work too, and came up with the following table showing distances from Cancun to the places mentioned in the Travel Warning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Mexico is a very large country, and while there is undeniably a current drug violence issue, it’s important to remember that Cancun is literally thousands of miles away from the spots mentioned in the latest USA Travel Warning."

For More Information go to http://www.isitsafetotraveltomexico.com/

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