Heading to a sunny Cancun this winter, and as usual, you’re concerned with your personal safety after being bombarded with mainstream news stories on how crime in the Mexican Caribbean is rising?
While there is some truth to that, and we would definitely recommend you exercise greater caution visiting, Cancun remains one of the safest––if not the safest––beach destination in Mexico this season, especially if your primary reason for going is, well, basking in the tropical sun in a luxury resort.
Unless you’ve kept up to date with the latest developments on the security front lately, you may be wondering what exactly makes us so certain Americans have nothing to worry about visiting Cancun in the near future, so here’s why:
Why Is Cancun Safe For Americans?
For starters, Cancun is and always has been, a low-risk destination for U.S. citizens.
It is classified as a Level 2 city by U.S. authorities, which means they do not discourage Americans from visiting, and instead, simply warn them on the necessary precautions that need taken when vacationing south of the border, which we’ll get to in a minute.
It is highly-surveilled, with CCTV and patrol units everywhere to be seen, particularly in the Hotel Zone, and even a Tourist Police––a battalion charged with the care of visitors––having been formed to ensure Americans, and every other guest, feels protected.
Back in 2022, we even reported extensively on how the U.S. issued an alert on kidnapping risks for the whole state of Quintana Roo––including Cancun––over a single individual who had been abducted, in unknown circumstances at the time.
For comparison purposes, can you imagine if there was ever a safety warning that applied to all and mentioned a similar, very specific incident that occurred sporadically in a big U.S. city like Atlanta, New York, or San Francisco, as if it were recurrent?
In that year, there was a single kidnap in the state.
Cancun Is Less Dangerous Than You Might Think
All of this to say that, based on how travel alerts are issued, government bodies seem to play it conservative in how they assess safety risks in Mexico, and you may agree or disagree with that, but it’s evident that, in reality, the risk of kidnapping in Cancun is minimal.
That’s just one newsworthy event: we can’t exactly tell you the last time we caught wind of shoot-outs where tourists got injured within Cancun’s Hotel Zone.
This should already be enough encouragement, but we’re glad to report the Caribbean hub is going even further:
As of this week, Ricardo Morales Santos, director of the Tourist Police, has confirmed they will be ramping up security in the Hotel Zone, with a total of 8 units, each with 7 to 8 officers, being deployed to the area to ensure crime levels stay low.
Gun violence affecting tourists may be uncommon… extortion and corruption, on the other hand, are more common.
Cancun Is Low-Risk, Yes, But…
We can’t tell you the number of times we’ve had reports of readers claiming they were pickpocketed, or fined after breaking poorly-defined traffic rules, particularly when renting cars locally.
These are all seriously inconvenient, and Santos has stated the main objective of the latest deployment is to keep extortion under check, as well as curb drug trafficking, a major concern in Quintana Roo, and ‘high-impact crimes’.
We can’t promise you corruption will decrease in response, but based on what we have seen for crime trends in Cancun, petty criminals may feel less emboldened to target tourists:
Down in Mexico, they call it the ‘cockroach effect‘, when criminals feel cornered by an increased presence of police, and jump to the next town where surveillance isn’t as strict yet.
Interestingly enough, locals in Cancun’s direct neighbor to the south, Playa Del Carmen, are concerned that, now that state authorities have made it very challenging, if not impossible, for lawbreakers to operate from Cancun’s Hotel Zone, they’ll be flocking there instead.
That’s a concern raised by the National Association of Regional Business Councils (Ancer), and it’s not exactly a good thing, by any means, but it only goes to show how actually effective Cancun has been in driving the zero-tolerance message home.
On top of the 8 new Hotel Zone units, Santos is adding 16 motorcycle units, to attend more efficiently to incidents taking place from kilometer zero to 20, in the event there are traffic jams along Kukulcan Boulevard.
The result is a much-safer Cancun, as Mara Lazama Espinosa, the Quintana Roo State Governor, has remarked herself.
The Bottomline
In short, Americans truly have no major concerns traveling to the Caribbean destination, other than keeping an eye on personal belongings in public spaces, notably highly-crowded ones, avoiding marginal districts tourists have no business visiting anyway, and keeping valuables in a hotel safe.
Crime can occur, for sure, like in any popular tourism hotspot, but it’s often restricted to nonviolent mugging and pickpocketing on public beaches––within resorts that straddle their own private beach, it’s very rare––and shopping zones.
Either way, the Hotel Zone and adjacent streets and leisure centers are incredibly safe, with police being promptly available to help if needed, and English being widely spoken, in the very least at a basic level.
So… ready to unwind by the seaside yet?
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