There are lots of happy people around here. You can see it on the big smiles of desk clerks, doormen,waitresses, room maids, bell persons, bartenders, spa attendants and all the others who've got their jobs back - after having been put out of work, some for nearly a year, by a giant hurricane named Wilma.

A year ago, they were scrambling to find safe spots as Wilma came barreling ashore, then whirled overhead for two terrible days and nights. When she finally moved on, much of this super-resort on the Mexican Caribbean was in shambles, its 12-mile-long strip of beachfront hotels clobbered by winds and waves.

Cancun's repair bills reportedly added up to billions of dollars. For example, two adjoining hotels on the strip, the JW Marriott and its sister property, the Marriott CasaMagna, had to shell out $100 million in renovations, including the tab for refurbishing all 900 of their rooms.

Wilma in the wind

When it became clear that Wilma was headed their way - with winds as high as 170 miles per hour - government officials ordered an evacuation of the 100-plus hotels dotting Cancun's white-sand beaches. Marriott's guests were taken to inland shelters to ride out the storm, while two dozen Marriott executives stayed behind to keep an eye on the two hotels.
"We moved into rooms on the 7th floor of the JW," recalls Michael Dudek, the hotel's food and beverage director. He didn't know it then, but Dudek and the rest of the execs would be seeing a lot of those rooms, and of each other, for seven more days until the storm alert was officially over.

"Our main assignment was to walk the properties seven or eight times a day and to keep Marriott's headquarters staff in Washington (D.C.) up to speed on what was going on," said Dudek.
"We'd stored basic food supplies on the 7th floor," he noted, "so we had enough to eat although nothing fancy...we went through a lot of peanut butter sandwiches." One day, on a tour of the hotel, Dudek's team spotted a group of electricians eating lobster and shrimp in the garage. They'd rigged up a portable generator to re-power the refrigeration system. "After that, we ate much better, too," said Dudek.

Emergency plan worked
Other executives of the JW and the CasaMagna were assigned to look after some 200 of their guests who'd been moved to two downtown hotels, miles away from the beach hotels. "We had an emergency plan that we'd practiced over and over, so we knew exactly what to do," said Germinal Garcia, director of marketing and sales for both Marriotts. "After Wilma finally moved on, we bussed the guests across the YucatanPeninsula (about a five-hour trip) to Merida, where the company had chartered two wide-body jets."

Hugo Lecanda, manager of the CasaMagna, was in charge of one of the shelters and also the bus trip to Merida. He said one of the jets was flown to Mexico City and the other to Atlanta, where the passengers connected to other flights to their home airports.

The two Marriott hotels were also quick to help out a number of their employees who'd lost their homes in the storm. "We got them rebuilt in 10 days," said Lecanda, "every single one of them."

What's Cancun like a year after Wilma? Official reports show the resort is about 90 percent back to business as usual. The hotels are filling up again, as are the area's hundreds of restaurants, shopping centers and discos. What's more, many of these spots, including a hefty percentage of Cancun's top hotels, look brand new, having had to undergo major renovations after the storm.

And what about Cancun's famous white-sand beaches? You'd never know that Wilma had blown away whole sections of the powdery stuff. It's all back, thanks in large part to an around-the-clock dredging project last spring. The $20 million program restored nine miles of beachfront, putting the final setting back in Mexico's crown jewel.