Frontera NorteSur

    As Mexico gears up for its annual Holy Week and Easter Week holiday beach bash, polemics continue to fly over the state of the country’s tourism sector. At the heart of the debate is how violence and the media’s coverage of it may or may not be discouraging tourism.

    Immediately challenging the declarations of an important industry official, the federal Secretariat of Tourism (Sectur) repeated earlier contentions this week that foreign visitation is on the upswing.

    The federal agency reported that Mexico received last year 5.9 million US tourists, a number which represented a 5.9 percent jump from 2009 and a 1.5 percent increase from 2008. In 2010 the total number of tourists that arrived by air reached 9,937,410 visitors, or a 14.3 percent spike over 2009’s numbers and a 5.5 percent increase over 2008’s figures, according to Sectur.

    But in a Queretaro meeting also this week, the outgoing president of the National Confederation of Secretaries of Tourism, an organization which groups together state tourism heads, insisted that US-origin tourism is down 10 percent. Oralia Vega Ortiz said the plunge has affected the states of Quintana Roo (Cancun), Jalisco (Puerto Vallarta) and Baja California, among other places.

    Carlos Alberto Puente, tourism secretary for the state of Zacatecas, coincided with Vega’s assessment. And Puente specifically laid the blame on insecurity.

    “We had some unfortunate incidents, which were regrettable and condemnable,” he said. “It doesn’t separate us from the reality of the country.”

    Last December only 40 percent of Zacatecas’ 2,300 hotel rooms were filled, Puente said. Although the tourism official said that December isn’t the best tourist season in Zacatecas, the central Mexican state has traditionally attracted former residents who travel home to visit relatives and friends during holiday breaks. Zacatecas is one of the leading migrant-expelling entities to the United States.

    A January 2011 study by the research arm of the Spanish-owned BBVA- Bancomer bank concluded that Mexico lost “international competitiveness” in the world tourism industry from 1999 to 2010. The study ranked Mexico in tenth place for global travel destinations, with tourist spending in the country lagging behind travelers’ expenditures in other nations.

    According to BBVA-Research, Mexico received 2.4 percent of all foreign tourists but took in only 1.3 percent of international tourism income in 2009. For overall competitiveness and number of lodgings per inhabitants, BBVA Research placed Mexico in the number 51 spot on the global scale.

    It should be noted that most analysts and observers regard 2009 as an especially bad year for Mexican tourism. The global economic meltdown, airline industry problems, the swine flu scare, new US passport requirements and sharp outbreaks of narco-violence all contributed to a “perfect storm,” so to speak.

    In an ambitious campaign, the Calderon administration aims to put Mexico on the road to becoming the fifth most popular tourist destination in the world by 2018.

    BBVA-Bancomer’s researchers also differ from Sectur in gauging the impact of tourism on the Mexican economy, reporting that tourism accounted for 6.9 percent of national income and generated 2.5 million jobs in 2008.

    On the other hand, Sectur Secretary Gloria Guevara has said that tourism-related business activity makes up nine percent of Mexico’s Gross Domestic Product, provides 7.5 million direct and indirect jobs and accounts for investments valued at $50 billion.

    To some degree, Mexico has compensated for the reported loss of US tourists by attracting continued and new streams of visitors from Canada, Europe and South America. Spain is a primary target market for potential tourists, and the Calderon Administration’s “Let’s Speak Well of Mexico” campaign has found particular resonance in Mexico’s former colonial master. And it’s small wonder. From 1999 to 2010, Spanish investors plowed an estimated $38 billion into the Mexican economy.

    Emblematic hotels owned by Spanish capitalists like the Barcelo and Sol Melia chains enjoy an important Mexican presence. A new and environmentally controversial mega-resort planned for the Sea of Cortez side of the Baja California Peninsula, Cabo Cortes, is a project of the Spanish company Hansa Urbana. Cabo Cortes’ 15-year development plan includes the construction of 6,000 new hotel rooms, 7,000 homes and golf courses.

    Sponsored by the parent company of the Spanish daily El Pais, a breakfast meeting on Mexico featuring tourism industry heavies was held at the International Tourism Fair in Madrid last January. Closed to media outlets except for El Pais, some participants reportedly expressed optimism about Mexico, but Gabriel Escarrer, chief of the Sol Melia chain, was quoted as warning that an image of “narco-terrorism” could drag the country down.

    According to one account of the meeting, Sectur Secretary Guevara complained of media coverage of Mexican violence, claiming that serious problems exist in only 80 of Mexico’s 2,500 municipalities.

    Last month, El Pais ran a special 24-page supplement on Mexico titled “An Emerging Country.”

    Meanwhile, news of narco-violence such as the ongoing discovery of mass graves in the northern border state of Tamaulipas continues to dominate US media coverage of Mexico. Such revelations are likely to further chill tourism from the US.

    In Mexico, though, authorities don’t expect the violence will have much of an impact on the national tourism that will cram highways leading to popular beach destinations in the coming days. In fact, Mexican security forces are staging operations designed to facilitate the tourist flow.

    “There will be checkpoints in all the states to make the tourist who comes feel secure and to give any help that is needed,” Oralia Vega said this week.

Frontera NorteSur: on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico