Spring Break Partiers Want Mexico, All-Inclusive and All-You-Can-Drink

(MoneyWatch)  Despite the U.S. State Department issuing a travel advisory on drug cartel violence along the Mexican border, spring break staples like Cancun and Mazatlan are doing brisk and lucrative business. The secret to luring American college students? Cheap, all-inclusive package deals including all-you-can-drink.

Let's face it, the Spring Break bottom line is booze, beaches and sun at the cheapest price possible. If hotels and airlines can get together to make a cheap package where a college student never has to pay for a drink, that package becomes pretty appealing. And Mexico knows that.

About 25,000 students from the United States and Canada are expected to lie on Mexico's beaches, drink and party, up from 20,000 last year. In Cancun, 85% of its 28,000 hotel rooms were filled in February -- a definite rise from 2009, when fears of H1N1, or swine flu, decimated Mexico's travel industry. Worries over swine flu have gone (although many ask that students get vaccinated. Yay, alarmism!) and Mexican officials say that Ciudad Juarez, the heart of drug-trafficking, is as far from Cancun as Chicago is to Miami.

Either way, college students aren't avoiding Mexico. (To ensure this, Acalpulco even paid MTV $200,000 to hold Spring Break coverage there in an attempt to make 18-21-year-olds aware of its charms.) After all, H1N1 is so 2009, and youth makes it easy to forget about the negatives and focus on the positives -- free booze.

Mexico has figured out the solution to at least the Spring Break problem, but will it also work beyond April 4? So far Mexico spent $80 million rebuilding beaches to make make up for the lost $2 billion in revenue last year, and are hoping that Americans will forgo Europe for a tropical beach.

Photo: jeremiahcity