In late July, a woman from Indianapolis posed a question on TripAdvisor:

Should she and her husband travel to Riviera Maya for a Mexican vacation? They had read about problems with alcohol at the resorts — vacationers who blacked out and were assaulted, robbed, raped, even died.

Her husband wanted to cancel; she did not.

Replies began popping up in the forum within minutes. After 10 days, there were 55 in all.

Twenty-four of the comments encouraged the couple not to worry.

“Just got back on Saturday and never felt safer,” wrote BeachDog77 from New York.