Mexico’s Court Terminates Riu’s $95.6-million Hotel Riviera Cancún

Cancun Beach - No New Riu
Pixabay

Riu Hotels & Resorts has been working on a new Cancun hotel for the last five years and it doesn’t look like this new build will continue.

In a nutshell: According to Mexico News Daily, Mexico’s Fifth District Court in Cancun “permanently” halted Riu’s 530-room $95.6M Hotel Riviera Cancun due to non-compliance with upgrading the wastewater treatment facility and other reasons.

Riu shuts down construction of Hotel Riviera Cancun

First, Riu has been working on this new build in Cancun for the last five years and received opposition during that time, too.

According to the article, the court said that Riu reneged on promises it made to upgrade wastewater treatment facilities, which would have cost 60 million pesos (USD 2,860,050).

In addition to the earlier non-compliance, there was another issue regarding construction concerns over an adjoining mangrove forest.

Back to the wastewater treatment facility.
Per Mexico News Daily, “the judge also noted that Cancun’s three municipal wastewater treatment plants are at their limit and can’t handle the extra wastewater load the hotel would have generated, as determined by an environmental impact study the Environment Ministry did in 2015.”

This appears to go even further though as the intention, according to the National Tourism Promotion Fund, was to have a maximum of 15,000 hotel rooms on Boulevard Kukulcan and there are currently a total of 36,000 rooms.   And…there’s also a $1B 3000-room project (on the books) called Grand Island Cancún, which could also be rejected.

Therefore, it is likely that there won’t be any new builds in the area and we’ll continue to see how this story unfolds.

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About Donna Adinolfi 248 Articles
Donna Adinolfi is a wellness travel expert, a freelance writer, an award-winning photographer, and the founder/publisher of MindfulAdventures.com. Her 30+ year career includes serving as the Travel & Spa Editor of Balance Magazine as well as planning wellness travel & retreats. An avid fan of the freedom from carrying cash or credit cards, Donna loves to visit all-inclusive wellness resorts in the U.S, and traveling to some of Mexico's and the Caribbean's many all-inclusive resorts several times each year. She's also a member of the North American Travel Journalists Association.
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