Quintana Roo to Pitch Sustainability in Reworked International Tourism Push

Quintana Roo — Tourism officials in Quintana Roo plan to create a sustainability board that will document environmental good practices across the state and use that record to reshape how the Mexican Caribbean is marketed to foreign travelers.

The board, to be convened under the state’s Consultative Tourism Council, will gather evidence of responsible practices that the Quintana Roo Tourism Department (SEDETUR) intends to fold into its international promotional campaigns, moving away from a pitch built almost entirely on sun and sand.

Deputy Tourism Secretary Andrés Aguilar said the new narrative will be assembled from the information the board compiles.

“We will be convening the Sustainability Board to document all the good practices. That is the raw material so that promotion can begin to project all those positive actions that exist in the destination,” Aguilar said.

Planning credentials and traveler demand

Officials said the shift rests on two main pillars and on addressing regional environmental challenges:

• Planning strategy: The state recently presented its Master Plan for Sustainable Tourism to the international certifier EarthCheck, which acknowledged that Quintana Roo has a formal long-term planning mechanism in place.
• Traveler preferences: Market studies indicate that 71 percent of tourists want to have a positive impact on the places they visit. Projections through 2050 anticipate demand for nature, culture and wellness travel will double.
• Sargassum management: During promotional tours in Argentina and Brazil, authorities presented containment work, scientific research and circular-economy programs coordinated among the public, private and academic sectors to handle the arrival of the seaweed.

Local benefits and regulatory alignment

The restructuring also calls for aligning legislation and operational capacity across Quintana Roo’s 12 destinations under a single sustainability standard. According to the authorities, transparent reporting of the benefits that reach local communities will draw visitors who are committed to protecting the places they visit.

“To the extent that promotion accounts for the benefit the tourist generates for the communities, we will have a flow of visitors who want to come and leave that positive impact,” Aguilar said.