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With an opening announced for November 2022, the construction of the Riu Palace Kukulkan Hotel, located at kilometer 13 of the Cancun hotel zone, is progressing at a steady pace.
With a sophisticated and elegant style, this Adults-Only, All-Inclusive resort will feature more than 400 superior rooms, many of them with ocean views. All rooms have been designed to guarantee guests a pleasant stay and maximum comfort.
The Hotel Riu Palace Kukulkan will offer 4 outdoor swimming pools with a sun terrace, one of them with a swim-up bar, a full gym, and an entertainment program for daytime live music, shows, and nightly entertainment as well. During the day, guests can access the facilities of the Riu Hotels in the Cancun area, located about 2 miles away, as well as the Renova Spa.
The hotel will have a varied gastronomic offer, including international cuisine in the main restaurant with cooking stations and the à la carte restaurants with Japanese, Mexican, and Italian cuisine specialties. Among the amenities, guests will have concierge services, an in-room bathrobe, and premium branded beverages throughout the hotel.
Joan Trian, director of Riu Hotels & Resorts, one of the most important Spanish hotel chains, with a hundred hotels around the world, describes Mexico as “a great country.” The hotel company has a significant presence in Mexico. “The country I travel the most to is Mexico because we have an enormous presence, 20 hotels in total. It’s a great country,” stated Joan Trian in a recent interview.
He also described how tourism will develop once the pandemic is over. “In the short and medium-term, the top tourist destinations will see a trend of local travelers staying to vacation in their own neck of the woods. There will be more investment to improve their tourism infrastructures. More emphasis will also be placed on health protocols. But generally speaking, little will change; people will still want to go on vacation,” Trian said.
The hotel chain had all of its 20 hotels open in the Mexican Caribbean in 2021. According to the statements of Luis Riu, CEO of Riu, the hotel chain is the first Spanish chain to open all of its hotels in the Americas. This was thanks to the recent opening of the Riu Tequila (Playa del Carmen, Mexico), the Riu Palace Macao (Punta Cana, Dominican Republic), the Riu Negril (Negril, Jamaica), and the Riu Plaza Panama (Panama).
The 42 hotels Riu maintains in America are already operating as usual: 20 in Mexico; 6 in Jamaica; 6 in the Dominican Republic; 3 in the United States; 2 in Aruba; 2 in Costa Rica; 2 in Panama and one property in the Bahamas.
This income growth is not near the 2019 figures reported before the Covid-19 pandemic crisis. Last year, the hotel company closed with 62% of the revenue reached before the pandemic. The outlook for this year is more optimistic. “We will continue to struggle, but I think we are all resigned to living with this virus and eager to resume, maintain or increase our trips and vacations. We have worked hard and put a lot of effort in the industry’s recovery, and we hope to see this consolidated by the end of 2022.”
The Riviera Maya makes a positive balance in hotel occupancy during 2021 with 52.15% and projects to increase more than two thousand new rooms by 2022. In December alone, it registered an occupancy of 75.84%. “If we compare it with 2019, 95% of the occupancy was recovered during the past December holidays,” said Manuel Paredes, the Riviera Maya Hotel Association (AHRM) executive director. The Riviera Maya had an increase of 1,380 hotel rooms despite the pandemic.” Paredes said that there would be an investment of 477 million dollars for 2022 and an offer of more than 2,000 rooms.
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