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Patterns and impacts of coastal recreation along the Gulf Coast of Mexico
Book chapter

Patterns and impacts of coastal recreation along the Gulf Coast of Mexico

Klaus J. Meyer-Arendt
Recreational Uses of Coastal Areas: a Research Project of the Commission on the Coastal Environment, International Geographical Union, pp.133-141
The GeoJournal Library (GEJL vol. 12), Kluwer Academic
1990
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2391-1_12

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Abstract

Much of Mexico’s shoreline has been transformed into a recreational cultural landscape. Segments of the Pacific coast and (more recently) the Caribbean coast have undergone such extensive cultural and physical modification by tourism that a recent regional study of Mexico broke them out as a separate ‘nation’ of ‘Club Mex’ (Casagrande, 1987). Included in Club Mex are the Pacific enclaves of Mazatlán, Puerto Vallarta, Manzanillo, Ixtapa, Acapulco, and Puerto Escondido and the Caribbean enclave of Cancún/Cozumel. Coastal tourism accounts for approximately 45% of total tourism in Mexico, which translates to about $700 million in (1983) revenues (Merino, 1987), and the Club Mex enclaves are the primary destinations of most tourists, both international and national. Recognizing the touristic value of its shores, Mexico devoted 93 percent of its (1982) investment in tourism — $370 million — to coastal infrastructural development. Major resort complexes were developed in the 1970s by the Mexican government at Ixtapa-Zihuantanejo on the Pacific coast (Reynoso y Valle and de Regt, 1979) and at Cancún on the Caribbean coast (Collins, 1979).

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