In a region known for its discos and booze cruises, where MTV goes to party and barhopping is commonplace, Promotora Xel-Hà is a peaceful retreat about an hour from the salty Cancun, Mexico, tourist trap. The ancient legend-based park markets itself as a naturalistic tropical universe dedicated to the preservation of the native flora and fauna found in the jungle of the Mayan Riviera that encompasses the nestled small facility. With such a natural and holistic focus, Xel-Hà has managed to create a sheltered reserve in a booming locale where most parks take a flashy and decadent commercial approach to launching attention-grabbing attractions.

Don’t get Xel-Hà wrong, though. The park has, in cahoots with several Mexican and American design companies, created a superior marketing strategy over the past few years to help push its brand of environmental fun laced with strong undertones of conservation and humanity. This past year, Promotora Xel-Hà took home first place honors at the Brass Ring Awards in the categories of Best Web Site, Best Brochure, and Best Outdoor Advertisement in its respective class, proving that sometimes, bolder isn’t always better.

Xel-Hà’s web site consists of layer on top of layer of contrasting blues and greens, as well as bubbly, yet vivid illustrations of swimming fish, waves, and an overhead view of the crystal-clear lagoon and park grounds. It offers all of the typical web site offerings (About Us, Attractions, Services, Plan Your Visit) located on a surprisingly appealing magenta pull-down banner, as well as a section dedicated to environmental awareness and wildlife preservation, which breaks down how Xel-Hà employees care for local species, such as parrots, stingless bees, and marine turtles. The web site also highlights various local conservation programs and alliances in which the park is involved.

A Mexican company called Kiben designed the web site roughly nine months ago. The company set up the platform, then Xel-Hà’s designers created the templates and the tone of the site, explains Claudia Sosa, brand manager for Promotora Xel-Hà. The web site took three months to prep and is currently updated regularly by the park’s on-site webmaster, Vanessa Hines.

“I think it’s very attractive,” says Sosa of the web site. “The pictures of the park, the treatment of the screen—we give some general information about entrance fees, etc., but we try to be very specific with all the activities that we have at the park to make it attractive for people.”

When it comes to the park’s brochures, it’s all about the people, or as Sosa explains, “the human element.” In the previous brochure design, she says there were many pictures of the park, nature, and the jungle, but “we were forgetting people inside the brochure. With this one, we tried to catch people experiencing the park.”

The award-winning pamphlet tells the story of Xel-Hà’s creation based on an ancient Mayan legend that incorporates natural elements like the waters, the wind, and the sun. Present-day images taken from the park, like one of a little girl with a snorkel mask and a young man jumping off a high cliff into the sparkling lagoon below, are scattered throughout the story to interject the human element, to which most visitors can relate. “All of their faces are really peaceful and fun, and they’re experiencing the nature of the park,” Sosa says. “That is what we want people to do.”

The third key to success for Promotora Xel-Hà this past year has been its outdoor advertisement campaign, which boasted the selling line, “Xel-Hà: Where Magic Succeeds.” The ad incorporates many of the park’s values—the environment, people enjoying nature, and conservation—by taking a portion of an overhead image of Xel-Hà and masking it in the shape of the Earth, with stars and outer space as a backdrop. “We introduced the human element again with pictures of dolphins swimming, a little girl with a snorkel, and a guy jumping off the cliffs, and combined it with the aerial picture,” Sosa says. “And it’s sending a message—just explore the magic of nature.”

Sosa explains that placement of the striking billboards is a bit more difficult in certain areas, like commercialized Cancun, where obtaining space for a large outdoor advertisement is either hard to come by or too costly. She says the park places ads on buses that run down the Cancun strip and on the sides of willing hotels to keep the Xel-Hà brand in tourists’ eyes. “We also have brochures in all of the hotels at the hospitality desks and everywhere else that tourists are staying,” Sosa says.

Near the Mayan Riviera, marketing requires a different approach, however. “We have the highway—there are plenty of billboards,” she says, “but we try to do it so we don’t affect the environment, so it doesn’t look really commercial. We don’t want it to look out of place.”

It’s hard to distinguish which has been more successful for Xel-Hà, its passionate and unyielding environmental concern or its saavy marketing approach. But one thing’s for sure—the Xel-Hà brand is out, and there’s no caging it. For more information go to www.xelha.com.mx.