CANCÚN - As Cancún continues to rebuild from the devastation of Hurricane Wilma, everyone here can agree on one thing: bringing tourists back to the city is of paramount importance.

Still, there is one segment of the tourist population that not all are anxious to see return: spring breakers - the U.S. college students who descend on this Caribbean resort in the weeks leading up to Easter for an annual celebration of binge drinking, bawdy behavior and wet t-shirt contests.

Some say that a new-look Cancún should position itself firmly as a high-end tourist destination, thereby pricing itself out of the spring breaker budget. But others, especially small business owners, argue that with recovery efforts still lagging, any tourism at this point is good tourism.

"Spring breakers go where the market allows them to go," said John McCarthy, director general of the National Fund for Tourism Promotion (Fonatur), the federal agency leading the tourism recovery effort in Cancún. "If a place is affordable, that´s where they´ll go."

Now, he said, many of the hotels that took spring breakers before Wilma are upgrading as they rebuild, at least partly with the idea of discouraging young partiers.

"The moment you allow spring breakers into your hotel, you know you´re going to have trouble and you´re going to have damage," McCarthy said.

However, some small business owners say that a shift to all high-end tourism would leave them out of the picture.

"For we small businesspeople, spring break is magnificent," said Judy Genis López, 57, who runs a shop on a pedestrian mall selling hats, shorts, and t-shirts emblazoned with off-color jokes in English. "The owners of the big hotels and the expensive restaurants, they live off money from rich people. But the rich people don´t buy from us."

NUMBERS IN DECLINE

For many years, Florida, and especially Fort Lauderdale, was the prime destination for U.S. college students on spring break. But during the 1980s, Fort Lauderdale began to clamp down on the rowdy behavior of spring breakers, and the students looked elsewhere. Cancún, with its white sand beaches, favorable exchange rate and drinking age of 18, offered an attractive alternative.

By 2002, an estimated 120,000 spring breakers had descended upon Cancún. But that same year, two U.S. students died and another360 were arrested during the partying. Cancún´s service providers responded with a "civility pact" that attempted to curb promotions encouraging drunken behavior, and some hotels began restricting the number of spring breakers that could occupy the same room.

In subsequent years, the number of visitors dropped below 100,000, and by 2005, Acapulco had caught up to Cancún as Mexico´s top spring break destination.

Now, as Cancún rebuilds after Hurricane Wilma devastated the city in October with torrential rains and 150-mile-per-hour winds, some see the recovery effort as an opportunity to continue de-emphasizing Cancún as a spring break hot spot.

"Obviously, we don´t discriminate and we are friendly to all kinds of markets," said Jesús Almaguer, head of the Cancún hotel owners association. "But yes, we are doing certain things to improve the quality and rates of our hotels so that a different type of person comes."

Jesús Rossano, director of tourism for the city, was not so ready to squeeze out the spring break market. He said Cancún would welcome this year´s crowd - which he predicted to be at around 38,000 - but would step up efforts to educate the spring breakers on local regulations and enforce responsible behavior from local business owners.

WAITING WITH OPEN ARMS

Genis López, the t-shirt saleswoman, said that while she doesn´t approve of the behavior of a lot of spring breakers, the community should tolerate them, at least just for a few weeks. She, like other entrepreneurs who have suffered 100 days of poor sales in the aftermath of Wilma, is desperately hoping for their return.

"Many in Cancún live off the spring breakers," she said. "But even before the hurricane, they weren´t coming like they used to. God willing, they will come back this year."

Her neighbor on the pedestrian mall, Leidy, 21, who declined to give her last name, came to Cancún two years ago from her home in impoverished Chiapas state in search of work. She began braiding the hair of tourists - mostly young women from the United States - and during spring break and other busy periods she braids four or five heads of hair per day, at 300 pesos (US$28) apiece.

Now, since Wilma, she goes days without a single customer. She said she is eagerly anticipating this year´s spring break season in the hope that she can recover some of her losses.

Even some who once shunned spring breakers are now looking forward to their arrival.

Juan Solís, manager at the Mextreme bar and grill, said that his establishment has traditionally targeted a more sophisticated clientele. But with business struggling mightily in the wake of Wilma, he was feeling less choosy.

"Normally, we don´t want spring breakers because they scare off our older customers," he said. "But now, with all that has happened, what we really want are tourists. Any tourists."