Cozumel Gate and Road Flagged by Environmentalists Are Not Part of Royal Caribbean Project

Cozumel, Quintana Roo — The wooden gate and access road that environmentalists recently flagged as unauthorized work in Cozumel’s Playa Mía area do not sit on the property where Royal Caribbean plans to build its Royal Beach Club, according to a site inspection compared against the maps filed in the project’s environmental paperwork.

The complaint surfaced on Monday, Nov. 2, when Mexican media reported statements from Noemí Guadalupe Martín Cab, president of the environmental group CIMAC. She attributed preparatory work in a mangrove area to the Royal Caribbean project: clearing of vegetation, the opening of an access road and the installation of a wooden gate. According to her complaint, the work was carried out without environmental authorization.

However, the regional environmental impact statement (MIA-R) for Royal Beach Club Cozumel, filed with the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) under file number 23QR2025U0054, places the gate described in the complaints at coordinates 20°22’59.3″N, 87°01’07.2″W (20.383139, -87.018667). That spot lies beside the coastal highway, in the immediate vicinity of the Allegro Cozumel hotel.

The Royal Beach Club Cozumel polygon sits farther north, on the shoreline at Playa San Francisco, a little more than a kilometer away. It is drawn that way in the MIA-R filed with Semarnat, which includes the project’s site maps. The distance between the southern edge of the polygon and the gate is roughly 1.1 to 1.4 kilometers. Comparing the point named in the complaints with that cartography shows them to be two separate sites.

Photographs show a sign posted outside the gate identifying the property as belonging to a company other than Royal Caribbean. Both the geographic location and the signage at the site contradict the claim that the land belongs to the cruise line.

The company has not yet begun construction on Royal Beach Club Cozumel, because the project’s MIA-R remains under review by the federal environmental authority.