Mexico attracts millions of visitors a year, despite its reputation for violence and drug cartels. Some 66 million people headed to the Central American country last year, most making their way to one of the beach resorts in Quintana Roo state.

This is where the party city Cancun is located, one of the favourite destinations for British sun seekers heading to Mexico.

In 2022, some 343,202 Brits visited the famous resort, making them the fourth largest group behind Americans, Canadians and Colombians.

Mexico’s beach resorts were previously immune to the brutal gang violence that pervades many other parts of the country and were seen as safe havens.

Yet that all appears to be changing, as the cartels attempt to exploit a growth in drug tourism.

Jay Armes III is a private detective with 38 years of experience and has dealt with the cartels on numerous occasions in his career.

He told Express.co.uk that criminal gangs began to infiltrate the resort as the demand for drugs from younger travellers started to increase.

“You’ve got kind of a perfect storm right now that’s taking place in Cancun,” he explained.

“You’ve got a huge influx of young people that are going to Cancun. They are exploring and discovering Mexico for the first time and they’re replacing the older demographic.

“The younger people like to go for drug tourism and the cartels are starting to slip into these areas to try and take advantage of that.”

Homicides have been rocketing as cartels fight each other for control of the streets, with almost 500 deaths recorded in Cancun in 2023 – a “very high number for any city”, according to Mr Armes.

Inevitably tourists are getting caught up in the violence, even though they are not being directly targeted. In February a Californian woman was killed in a shootout near a popular Tulum beach.

Mr Armes explained that tourists could be dragged into the violence at any time, simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong moment.

“People go to a restaurant and they’re trying to just have a meal with their family, when someone from a rival drug cartel is sitting in that same restaurant with you and the other cartel’s hitmen come in see that person on the other side of the room and start spaying the place with AK-47s,” he said.

“Or you’re in an area where there’s drug trafficking for whatever reason, you look like someone from a rival cartel, either because of the way you’re dressed, or the vehicle that you happen to be in and they’ll shoot you. They don’t talk to you, they don’t question you, they’ll just gun you down.”

The authorities have beefed up security in the resorts in an attempt to reassure tourists. In 2023 some 1,500 soldiers from the National Guard and the Navy were sent to patrol the streets and beaches. More recently the Mexican Ministry of Defence sent 2,100 additional troops.

However, the cartels have no fear of law enforcement, and appear to have come to a tacit understanding with them.

“The cartels do not run from the police or the military, because typically there’s more of them than there are law enforcement and they’re better armed and equipped,” Mr Armes said.

“They’ll confront the police officers or the military that just showed up to respond to the shooting and the military or the police will shake their hands, turn around and get in their vehicles and drive away. So I mean, it’s just a very unique area of the world.”

The gangs have started to target tourists for what is being dubbed as “express” kidnappings, which are providing them with fast, easy cash.

This involves taking a tourist hostage and then forcing them to withdraw money from ATMs. Then the gangs tell their hostage to call their family back home to get them to pay a ransom of $15,000 (£11,721).

“For the cartels that’s one day’s work and that’s a lot of money,” the private invetigator explained. “They know that even though that person may not be wealthy – they’re maybe just a factory worker, a blue-collar guy that has an office job – they know that between his family, neighbours and friends from church they’ll get $15,000 (£11,721) together right, and that’s why to them it is quick and easy money.”