MÉRIDA, Mexico — When Susan Graham-Bond and her fiancé eloped to Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula this year, they spent two weeks traveling between five lavishly restored old estates. At one, they had a private candlelit wedding ceremony in the shell of an old vine-covered chapel. At others, they swam in huge pools within ruins and were greeted every night by flowers strewn in their room.

Only one thing was missing: other guests. For the couple, that was part of the appeal. "There's something absolutely cool about being the only people we know who have done this," says Ms. Graham-Bond, a wedding planner from Atlanta.

By now, the Yucatán's colonial capital Mérida and its surrounding countryside was supposed to be a bustling tourist destination. It hasn't worked out that way. Grand estates that have been converted into resorts stand waiting for travelers. But so far, the crowds aren't coming. With the Mexican government marketing the merits of the eastern coastline, particularly Cancún and the Mayan Riviera, inland areas like Mérida have been overlooked.

When I first moved to Mexico for The Wall Street Journal 11 years ago, this area of the Yucatán was serene and unspoiled. Since then, developers from as far away as Europe have plotted to transform old local estates — many of them veritable towns surrounded by tall walls — into lavish hotels. A dozen or so properties have been renovated with breathtaking results.

These estates, known as haciendas, are a great opportunity to stay in plush, meticulously restored traditional properties, often close to Mayan ruins. With so few guests at some, last-minute bookings are possible even in the current peak season. But for owners looking to make a return on their investment, sluggish occupancy and the prohibitive cost of restoration is a concern.

This reflects a broader trend in Mexico to convert haciendas into successful resorts. For decades, state and federal tourism officials have tried. The property owners include some of Mexico's richest capitalists, so extensive government support is controversial. Owners also don't share the same agenda. Some
dream of designing world-famous destination resorts. Others simply dabble in hospitality, renting out rooms by request, but generally preferring to keep their properties private.

Mexico has several hacienda zones, from the great cattle ranchos of Jalisco and Coahuila west and north of Mexico City, to the sugar ingenios of Puebla and Cuernavaca. Many are open for tourism. But nowhere are hacienda as bountiful as Yucatán's old henequen belt, an area winding along 200 miles of back roads that flourished a hundred years ago. Henequen, a durable fiber harvested from cactus shrubs and made into twine, was planted in tight rows and required much less land than cattle ranching. The haciendas of henequen estate owners rose just about every 10 miles.

Compared with the rest of the country, Mexico's Yucatán still remains quite unspoiled. Beyond the stately old estates are even older Mayan cities, whose traces are still felt to this day. In some tiny villages, people still speak pre-Columbian dialects; their spicy meals are concocted from deer meat, plantains and fiery-hot chili peppers. Fresh mineral springs lie just below the flat landscape.

Religious sites are still being discovered under the jungle's growth, many within walking distance of the walls of estates. Hacienda Chichén, one of the first properties to be restored for tourism, abuts the famous Chichén Itzá ruins — one of Mexico's most popular tourist sites — and guests are encouraged to visit just after dawn, before the busloads of day trippers arrive, or just before nightfall to enjoy the pyramids, ball courts and shrines without the mobs.

By the late 1990s, when the stirrings of a rustic real-estate boom came to Yucatán, a handful of world-class business moguls were already wresting title to dozens of these homes. One of Mexico's richest men, the banker Roberto Hernandez, had succeeded — fabulously. Mr. Hernandez, who sold his controlling stake in Mexico's largest bank, Banamex, to Citigroup in 2001 (a $12.5 billion deal) has opened five of these restored plantations into luxury resorts. They're strung out like jewels on a chain, all within an easy drive of each other between Mérida and Campeche. With rates ranging between $359 and $799 a night they're not for bargain hunters.

Hacienda Santa Rosa, in a village due south of Merida called Maxcanú, was built around deep blue cisterns — the catch-basins Santa Rosa's founders installed to capture precious rainwater. Today the hacienda's main building sits directly above the deepest pool, supported by four circular arches. Other pools — usually converted football field-length trenches where cattle would drink their fill — are behind Santa Rosa's bedroom suites.

At Hacienda San José Cholul, the high-ceilinged storerooms where the bales of harvested sisal fiber once were stacked are now bedroom suites. One has a spiky-trunked ceiba tree towering up from the bathroom tiles and through the restored roof. Double doors of mahogany open onto beds with rich cotton sheets and adobe walls painted with colors that recall Gaugin's tropical scenes.

At one estate, the Hacienda San Antonio Millet near the village of Tixkokob, I was one of only 25 guests who have stayed there — in the past two years. Solitude among the tropical flora is nice, to be sure. But silence endured while being scrutinized by an eager staff of 25 or 30 Mayan-speaking staff can be downright spooky. Another drawback: the musty smell that met my nostrils as one barely used bedroom at this hacienda was cracked open for a rare guest.

Not all properties say they're struggling to fill rooms. Daniel Mellado, who does marketing for the Starwood Hotels unit operating Mr. Hernandez' five properties, says his group is enjoying its best season yet, with about 70% occupancy at each of the haciendas. He says it's due, in part, to targeting segments like weddings and allowing guests to redeem points in the frequent guest program for free stays.

Hacienda Petac's model addresses the low-occupancy dilemma. The property's five bedrooms must be booked en masse, which means only groups are invited to stay. Conferences, executive retreats and family reunions are the norm, with parties of 10 to 14 paying a single price that rounds out to about $1,500 a day.Most stays last a week. All meals, snacks and drinks — including cocktails — are included.

Hacienda Petac, the nicest place I visited in January has been restored meticulously by a Texas couple, Dev and Chuck Stern, right down to using resin from the local chucum tree to line all the property's limestone surfaces. The technique, used first by Mayans and later by their colonial overlords, mixes crushed rock, egg yolks, honey and urine with the natural sap, to create a material that is both impermeable and cool to the touch.

Chicago investment manager Lynn Maddox booked the entire estate of Hacienda Petac recently for his 65th birthday. For less than the cost of an a round-the-world cruise, he and his wife stayed at the hacienda for two weeks, flying four different couples in on successive weeks. "Someone who's never been to Mexico might be somewhat taken aback," he says of the experience. "But to be out in the middle of nowhere in some small village. It was just fabulous."