Everyone needs to know what the future will produce. With Cozumel, if you want to vacation in the area, you will no doubt like to know how it evolves and changes. If you are living in Cozumel or seeking to invest in the area, seeing the future is a vital topic for you. Knowing what areas will develop and what places might not be a desirable investment can be the difference between a good investment and a bad one.
Goodbye to more local restaurants and institutions
As rents rise and low seasons kill more business, it will be the larger restaurants and businesses that survive. The business environment has changed in the past few years, and the cost of running a business in Cozumel has become more trying. Smaller business owners are looking for options out of downtown.
The competition of restaurants has raised the quality and variety of food options in Cozumel, which has been nice. There is, however, a downside. Without the best locations, budgets to advertise, the cost of doing business here will have a strenuous battle over the next 5 years.
Cozumel will continue moving East.
Already Cozumel is springing up new developments along 11th and the Transversal. We predict this trend to continue. The business sector has already taken note and is moving in.
We also foresee that more residents will move from downtown to these new developments. This is because greedy property owners will now sell and cause a construction boom to take place. This will cause rents to increase as landlords move away from long-term rentals to the short-term Airbnb rental portfolio.
Faster ferries
You might assume the ferries are fast now but imagine how it would be if they were faster? More people would visit Cozumel for the day if it were quicker and smoother to get there. It also means that the thousands of people who arrive at Cozumel via cruises would have more time to see things on the mainland. With faster ferries, the island of Cozumel can increase business opportunities.
Our ferries have been running for a decade at this speed. We predict it is only a matter of time that the business world figures out how to be profitable and run faster ferries.
Airbnb will boom as Cozumel builds more condos.
Airbnb has developed in Cozumel as an investor’s dream of buying a condo and paying it off. The short-term rental market has affected Cozumel. Because the Airbnb market is so vast, many individuals use it. We predict that people over the next 5 years will want more services and convenience. These factors will mean that the low-quality Airbnbs will no longer get bookings in this market.
The real estate market will loosen.
Southwest Airlines will be Godsend
The arrival of Southwest Airlines will be the biggest tourism boost the island has seen in the past 20 years. Many USA citizens have southwest credit cards and get points when they fly for business. Our market will explode and the other guys will scramble to lower their rates to compete with Southwest. The “Southwest effect” became a major reason that overall fares dropped in its new markets, and the phenomenon was studied in business schools and the halls of government. The Department of Transportation marveled in a 1993 report: “The principal driving force behind dramatic fundamental changes that have occurred and will occur in the U.S. airline industry over the next few years is the dramatic growth of low-cost Southwest Airlines.”
Competitors see Southwest as cold-blooded and ruthless.
“Their approach is to search out weak companies and contest them out of business,” says Bryan Bedford, the chairman and chief executive of Republic Airways, which bought Frontier out of bankruptcy 11 years ago. “It’s no different than Wal-Mart plunking a big-box store near a local family-owned grocery store; you either respond to the competition, or you get out.”