Articles
Technical analysis by Fernando Loría, Director of Hurricane Solution.
50 articles
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Hotels
Does a Hurricane Wash the Sargassum Away? Not the Way We Think
Every time a storm shows up on the Quintana Roo map, people on the beach ask the same question: is it going to clear out the sargassum? The short answer is yes, for two days. Then it brings it back.
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Hotels
How to Prepare a Hurricane Protection Budget or Estimate for a Hotel
When a hotel requests a budget or estimate for hurricane protection, it's natural to start by asking how much it costs per square meter. That figure can be useful as an initial reference, but on its…
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Hotels
When a Hotel Should Get a Quote for Hurricane Protection for the 2027 Season
One of the most common questions in hurricane protection is when a hotel should start requesting quotes for the next season. My answer is usually simple: when there is still no storm forcing the…
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Testing & certifications
What It Really Means to Protect a Hotel for a Category 5 Hurricane
The phrase “Category 5 hurricane protection” gets used loosely in the market. For a hotel, however, that phrase must mean more than a general description of strength. A Category 5 storm does not test…
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Hotels
When a Months-Long Closure Turns into Years of Lost Customers
A hotel can finish rebuilding and still be recovering from the storm. This idea matters because we usually measure recovery by physical milestones. The roof was repaired, the finishes were replaced…
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Hotels
The Cost Almost No One Calculates After a Hurricane: Lost Market Share
After a major hurricane, physical damage gets immediate attention. That's natural. There are rooms to inspect, equipment to check, water to remove, contractors to coordinate, and decisions to make…
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Insurance
Hurricane Insurance: Why a Policy Is No Substitute for Prevention
For a hotel located in a hurricane-exposed area, carrying an adequate policy is a normal and necessary part of managing the asset. A high-value property can't treat insurance as a secondary issue…
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Hotels
What It Can Cost a Hotel to Stay Closed After a Hurricane
When people talk about what a hurricane costs a hotel, the conversation usually starts with what can be seen: broken glass, damaged finishes, lost furniture, water inside guest rooms, or equipment…
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Certifications
The Certificate Can Be Genuine and the Installed System Can Still Not Be the Certified System
This is one of the conversations I consider most important for the Mexican market, because the problem is difficult for a client to detect. A supplier can show an authentic certificate. …
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Best practicesHow to Verify Whether a Patent in This Industry Is Real
"Patented" is probably one of the most used and least verified words in Mexico's entire hurricane protection industry. It appears in nearly every sales brochure. It almost never appears alongside a number a buyer could look up…
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CertificationsWhy an Impact Test Does Not Tell the Whole Story
Almost every hurricane protection vendor has, at some point in the sales presentation, a video of a test cannon firing a projectile at their system. It is a visually convincing demonstration, and the implicit message is clear: this works…
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HurricanesThe Lesson Olivia Left in Mazatlán, and Why It Still Applies
In conversations with property owners in Mazatlán, especially younger ones or those who bought in the last few years, I frequently hear a version of the same idea: "storms don't hit us as hard here as they do in the Caribbean." The city's own…
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TipsWhat the Evidence Actually Says About Plywood
Every hurricane season, in hardware stores up and down the Mexican coast, the same scene repeats itself: owners buying plywood panels and nailing them over windows hours before a storm arrives. The practice is so widespread that many people…
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HotelsHow to Protect a Palapa Without Losing Its Architectural Value
Almost every boutique hotel owner in Tulum I have worked with opens the hurricane protection conversation with the same unspoken concern: "I don't want it to look like a bunker." The concern is legitimate, because the palapa is often why a guest…
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B2B authorityHow to Present Hurricane Protection to a Hotel Committee
I have sat in enough hotel committee rooms along the Mexican coast to recognize the exact point at which a hurricane protection proposal stalls. Someone presents the cost per square meter…
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CertificationsHow to Tell Hurricane Protection Certifications Apart
The word "certified" appears in practically every hurricane protection quote issued in Mexico. Almost none of them specify under which standard, which forces were tested, or how it was done…
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Best practicesWhat Beryl Changed About the Real Preparation Timeline
Every year, almost without exception, I hear the same line from hotel owners and managers in Quintana Roo: "we still have time, the heavy part of the season is August and September." Beryl proved…
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Residential
What Hurricane Rachel Taught Us in Manzanillo
There's a difference between Vallarta and Manzanillo that barely made it into this week's headlines. While Vallarta sat north of the Tropical Storm Watch area for Rachel, Manzanillo was inside the …
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TipsThe Physics That Decides Whether a Property Survives a Category 5 Hurricane
A couple of seasons ago I visited a hotel in the Riviera Maya that felt completely protected. Tempered glass across the main facade, certified sliding doors in the lobby, guest room windows with…
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Hotels
What Hurricane Polo Taught Us in Los Cabos
Polo reached Category 5 in the Pacific and, based on its central pressure, went into the record books as the second most intense hurricane in the eastern Pacific, behind only Patricia. For a couple…
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HurricanesWhat Hurricane Otis Changed About Hurricane Protection in Acapulco: Seven Lessons
In the early hours of October 25, 2023, Hurricane Otis made landfall just south of Acapulco as a Category 5. According to the National Hurricane Center's official report , it caused at least 52 …
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HurricanesHurricane Protection for Acapulco Hotels: Product, Engineering and Execution
For hotel owners, general managers and purchasing departments in Acapulco, hurricane protection is no longer a line item that can be bought on price alone. Hurricane Otis showed what happens when …
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HurricanesConcrete Did Not Fail in Otis. The Openings Did.
In October 2023, Hurricane Otis made landfall in Acapulco as a Category 5 storm, intensifying at a rate no model predicted in time. Weeks later I walked the city alongside insurance and construction…
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Commercial
What Hurricane Rachel Taught Us in Lázaro Cárdenas
Rachel passed off the coast of Michoacán on September 28 and 29 as a tropical storm, more than 400 km (250 miles) south of Lázaro Cárdenas, and by Wednesday the 30th it was already about 570 km west…
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Certifications
Why a Component Only a Few Inches Long Can Decide the Outcome of the Entire System
The screen is the part everyone sees. The anchor is the part almost nobody looks at. Yet during a hurricane, every pound of load that enters the fabric ends up looking for its way into those small …
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Residential
What Hurricane Rachel Taught Us on the Costalegre
South of Cabo Corrientes, the Jalisco coast becomes long, open to the Pacific, and short on roads. This week, that stretch was split in two: the north, from Cabo Corrientes to Playa Pérula, under a…
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CertificationsWhy Hurricane Solution's IHPA Membership Matters in Puerto Vallarta
Puerto Vallarta has a reputation for being a sheltered place. Banderas Bay and the Sierra Madre do lower the odds of a direct hit, and many years go by with nothing more than heavy summer rain…
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Insurance
Why Mitigation Documentation Has to Change When the Building Changes
One of the most deceptive situations I run into at older properties is this: the administrator has a perfectly organized binder proving that the building received hurricane protection years ago. There …
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Hotels
What Hurricane Rachel Taught Us in Vallarta
On Wednesday, September 30, shortly after midnight, Rachel became a hurricane about 400 kilometers (250 miles) from Puerto Vallarta. By morning, the question coming up again and again in the news and…
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Insurance
What a Hotel Should Receive When a Hurricane Protection Project Is Finished
When a major installation is completed, most owners check two things: that the physical work is finished and that the invoice matches the contract. In hurricane protection, that is not enough. A …
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Hotels
How to Make a Hurricane Protocol Survive Turnover in the Hotel's Staff
A protection system can last many years. The maintenance director probably will not. I do not say that as criticism. It is simply the reality of hospitality. General managers change, security chiefs …
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Hotels
The Mistake of Measuring How Long a Panel Takes to Go Up Instead of How Long a Hotel Takes to Protect Itself
In hotels, one of the questions I hear most often is: “how long does it take to install each panel?” It is a reasonable question, but it is not the one that determines whether the property will be …
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Best practices
How to Protect a Facade Without Making It Look Like a Hurricane System All Year
On high-value properties, the conversation about hurricane protection almost always has two parts. The first is obvious: the system has to protect. The second…
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Best practices
Why Anchoring Must Be Designed for the Building, Not Just for the Fabric
When I arrive at a property to evaluate hurricane protection, one of the first things I do has nothing to do with the fabric. I look at where the anchor would…
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Hurricanes
How to Read a Storm Record Without Inflating It or Dismissing It
There are two opposite mistakes companies make when they talk about hurricane performance. The first is inflating the story: taking the maximum category a storm…
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Hurricanes
Why 155 Storms Tell a Different Story Than a Single Test
This industry talks a great deal about testing. That makes sense: a serious certification tells us that a system was subjected to a defined condition, under a…
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Certifications
What Happens to the Force After a Projectile Hits the Fabric
When someone watches a video of an impact test, attention goes straight to the center of the screen. A 2x4 is fired, it strikes the protection, and the question…
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Certifications
How to Compare Wood, Metal, and Hurricane Fabrics When Every System Speaks a Different Language
One of the most confusing conversations a property owner can have happens when three hurricane protection proposals land on the desk and every vendor uses a diff…
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Certifications
What a Military Hospital Can Teach an Oceanfront Hotel
When we mention that the technology we represent has been installed on U.S. military hospital projects, some people react as though it were an interesting reference but a distant one. A homeowner may…
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Certifications
Why 30 Feet per Second Completely Change the Margin of Protection
When someone asks me what practical difference there is between “normal” hurricane protection and protection tested to a higher level, I usually start with a very simple idea: not every certification…
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Certifications
Who Actually Tested Your System? A University, a Laboratory, a Government, an Association and a Military Branch Are Not the Same Thing
Sales decks often show a row of logos: ASTM, a university, Miami-Dade, Florida, an association, an armed force. Visually they look equivalent. Technically they are not. And for a hotel, understanding…
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Insurance
Los Cabos: The Certification Package a Resort or Luxury Development Should Require Before Approving Hurricane Protection
Los Cabos has an unusual combination: high-value architecture, large expanses of glass, properties that open onto the landscape, intense sun, a marine environment and a market where the guest experie…
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Insurance
Acapulco: How to Write Certification Requirements into a Hotel Reconstruction Contract or Tender
After Otis, Acapulco does not need more generic language about resilience. It needs contracts that translate the word “resistant” into verifiable obligations. The National Hurricane Center documented…
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Certifications
Puerto Vallarta: Why a Hotel Should Demand International Standards Even When Mexico Does Not Require Them
One of the most important calls in risk management is telling apart “what the authority requires of me” and “what my asset actually needs.” The two are not always the same thing. In Puerto Vallarta, a…
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Insurance
Cancún: which certifications a Hotel Zone property should require before approving a hurricane system
Cancún does not need anyone to explain that hurricanes exist. The question in 2026 is what level of evidence a Hotel Zone property should demand before approving a protection system.
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Insurance
The certification matrix a hotel hurricane protection RFP should include
When an RFP asks for “hurricane protection” as a generic category, every bidder interprets the scope in its own favor. A compliance matrix forces them all to compete on the same definition.
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Certifications
A certified system is only as good as the company that installs it
Testing, codes and independent laboratories establish what a system can withstand. What no certificate reflects is the quality of the company that finally puts that system on the building.
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Certifications
Product certification vs. lab test vs. code approval: they do not mean the same thing
A folder of “certifications” usually holds very different documents placed side by side. All of them can be valuable. The mistake is assuming they all answer the same question about risk.
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Certifications
What does IHPA membership mean, and why should a hotel care?
Some credentials prove something about a product, and some say something about the company that sells it, installs it, and stands behind it. IHPA membership belongs firmly to the second category.
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Certifications
Level E: the military impact test that holds a hurricane system to a different standard
In hurricane protection, the word “certified” gets used far too easily. For a hotel, a hospital, an airport, or a critical facility, the right question is not whether a vendor can show you a logo.
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