Planning to visit CUN for the first time in over a decade. Some reviews on various hotels on Tripadvisor suggest that the beach sustained major damage during Hurricane Wilma and the level of rebuilding has been incomplete and uneven.

Could anyone who's been there in the last year or so comment on this? Any suggestions on specific parts of CUN where the beach is in noticeably better or worse condition right now? One commentor suggested that the northern end of the city (near downtown/convention center) was in the best condition, that the northern end of the hotel zone was generally better and that things got worse the further south one went.

Thanks for any advice!

I can't comment on Cancun specifically, but we stayed at the Royal Hideaway in Playa del Carmen last May. There was considerable erosion in that area, so would confirm what you heard about the damage being worse further south.

The beach that was left was still pretty and good to walk on, but the biggest problem were these huge black "berms" everywhere, they laid to stop further erosion. They are big bags filled with sand, look exactly like beached whales from a distance. They are about 3-4 feet tall, as much as 20 feet long, get covered with seaweed, and are extremely hard to climb over. They actually blocked the entire beach in some areas in front of seawalls, making it almost impossible to go any further down the beach.

Thanks for the info. I am bumping this in hopes of getting additional input.

I go to Cancun a couple times a year, so I follow some of the TripAdvisor posts. I usually stay at one of the Marriotts in the middle of the south side of the "7". There has been considerable erosion still, from Wilma and after. The tides are also considerably rougher here.
I just read a recent post on the JW beach access being closed, so it seems to be getting worse yet.
My advice is to look around the middle of the "7". I stayed at the Riu Cancun this past Christmas and there was plenty of beach. It's located just north of the point area. This area is calmer to swin in, as well.

It is a significant problem, unfortunately. I believe the Mexican government spent a considerable amount of money and effort to import sand to replace that which was eroded largely by the Hurricane. To me the bigger problem is that a number of rocks in the surf have been exposed. My family stayed at the former Hyatt Caribe (now a Park Royal) last July, and the sharp exposed rocks made it almost impossible to play in the sea.

I stayed recently at the Hyatt Regency and have stayed there many times in the past.
The beach is now non existant. There used to be a platform that you sunbathe on and also jump into the ocean, its gone. There used to be stairs that you would walk around to Dreams, they are damaged leaving the bottom stairs gone completely.

I returned Tues. from CUN and stayed at Gran Caribe Real and it had a nice large section of beach thanks to a rock beach wall or breakwater they built out from the shoreline to help slow beach erosion and shelter the beach from large waves. There are decent pictures on Trip Advisor and I've just uploaded 10 pictures in total so the review should be available under the same username, tcook052, in a day or two. The once fairly uniform beach has changed into a more zig zag patern with some resorts have okay section of sand and others virtually none so you are wise to check it out before arriving.

I realized that I never responded to this thread. That's because, after some deliberation, we decided not to go to CUN this summer for a variety of reasons, including the possibility of beach damage, but more importantly the screamin' deal we got on tickets to Europe instead ($550 r/t in high season). So, I wanted to thank everyone for the info, and still hope I will be headed to CUN sometime soon, after which I'll be able to provide additional data points.

The government was just getting ready to dump more sand on Cancun and Playa del Carmen when I was there in early August---for real this time. But it's a tough battle since the hotels were not built in a very sustainable way: strip out all the vegetation and put up lots of concrete 50 yards from the water. The only place I didn't see any erosion on the whole coast was in Tulum (where it's just low-rise hotels way back from the water). Puerto Morales wasn't looking too bad though, thanks to a protected reef right off the shore.