El Universal newspaper reported, last week, that international investment bankers, UBS, will be acting as financial advisers on the new Tulum airport project in the Riviera Maya.

The Mexican daily's respected columnist, Alberto Aguilar, wrote that everything is ready to launch the Tulum airport bidding process in January and advisers have been chosen, including UBS, as financial advisers, and Mexican bank, Banobras, as the "assigned agent".

Although Aguilar didn't name his sources, the detail of the information in his column suggests he has reliable contacts that are closely involved in the project.

Aguilar said the Tulum airport land is all agreed (as previously reported by us), local concerns have been overcome and go ahead has been given from INAH (Mexico's archaelogy authority).

The article pointed out that it still remains to be seen if the Federal Competition (Anti Trust) Commission will allow the owner/operator of Cancun airport, ASUR, to bid, and that this will be a "tricky" decision for the Commission that could leave the way open for new players.

Aguilar suggests that private equity firm, Advent, will show interest in bidding, along with two other established Mexican airport operators - GAP (Pacific airports) and OMA (North Central airports).

Although the bidding process was expected to be launched this year, difficult financial markets and technical delays had caused the timetable to slip.

However, the launch of the bidding process for the new Tulum airport now looks certain for the New Year and 2010 will be a big year for Tulum.

Visit our destination information pages for more about Tulum airport.