Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo — Mexico’s environmental authority has approved a major tourist development adjacent to Punta Venado, a beach area in the southern part of the Calica region, that will include two hotels, a beach club, and commercial space.
The Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) authorized the “Riviera Maya Ecotourism Complex,” promoted by Oleum Joint Ventures. The project underwent a unified land-use change process initiated in December 2023 and received approval after more than two years of review.
The construction period is set at five years and six months, with an operational lifespan of 50 years. The development will occupy 728,887 square meters across the Punta Piedra and Punta Ina Xcaret properties, near the Mar Caribe and Felipe Carrillo Puerto protected natural areas — the latter designated during the final year of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration.
According to the technical document submitted by the company, the complex will feature two hotels with 286 rooms each, totaling 572 keys, along with a beach club, botanical garden, artificial water bodies, internal roads, parking, and general service areas.
The estimated investment is 800 million Mexican pesos (about $40 million USD), with 100 million allocated for site preparation, 600 million for construction, and 80 million for operations. Only 10 million pesos are earmarked for land-use change compensation, and another 10 million for environmental prevention, mitigation, and compensation measures — a point that has drawn scrutiny given the project’s location between ecologically valuable zones.
