The wave of violence that devastates Acapulco has caused many tourists to cancel their stay in the city, one of the best-known tourist references in Mexico. Once famous for its lively nightlife, beaches and golf, it has now seen its popularity plummet due to rising crime. Entrepreneurs in the tourism sector estimate that attacks by criminal groups have left more than 7,500 hotel room cancellations this holiday season.
Despite the measures to safeguard locals and tourists, the crimes have exceeded the security of the port, as shown by the recent murder of a well-known local businessman on the Autopista del Sol, the body of a young woman abandoned in a garbage bag, a blockade of drug trafficking with more than 10 cars set on fire on the Acapulco-Zihuatanejo highway and the murder of a police officer.
The inhabitants warn of an economic crisis, since more than 80% live from tourism.
“For us, it's been a bit of a different season. We expect a little more occupancy, so we hope to reach the occupancy rates we had in 2019, because everything looked like that to be the case," the president of the Acapulco Hotels and Tourism Companies Section, Alejandro, told EFE. Dominguez.
During the second quarter of 2019, the tourist influx in Acapulco was more than 1.84 million visitors, one of the highest points of the decade.
And although the arrival of tourists has been recovering, those levels prior to the pandemic have not yet been reached, which is complicated by violent events.
"We are already talking about about 7,500 room nights that we are losing, that were cancelled. And, if we multiply it by people, we are talking about more than 10,000 people who stopped coming to the port due to this situation," said Domínguez, based on the hotels that are part of the association it represents.
For hoteliers, these cancellations are becoming a big problem because, they argued, the most difficult months for tourism are coming: September and October.
Even so, they hope to have enough time to rebuild confidence among tourists so that they return to this port.
Despite the outlook, Acapulco had a 27% increase in arrivals at the airport of national tourism and 7% international, with a level of 73.6% in hotel occupancy just last weekend, some 14 percentage points above the same dates of 2022.
“The tangible proof (of the recovery) is that today we are at 70% hotel occupancy on a weekday and we hope that this weekend it will pick up again,” said the municipal Tourism Secretary, David Abarca Rodríguez.
The official affirmed that they will continue working to encourage tourists to return to the port, since there are a hundred new tourist destinations with which Acapulco is competing.
"And that is what we are doing, creating strategies to present everything we have, we are reinventing ourselves with what we have," he said.
To reinforce security, 500 elements of the National Guard have been added as part of the "Joint Task Force" program.
Although the images of the crime blockades go around the country, "the tourist arrives in Acapulco and already feels safe, nothing happens to the tourists," said the president of Infrastructure of the Tourism Advisory Council, Jesús Zamora Cervantes.
"The truth is that the tourist is fine, they are well cared for. Some isolated event can happen, but being here there is no problem. The problem is the journey and we have to guarantee that their journey and return are safe," he explained.
In recent weeks, there have been criminal incidents such as assaults, blockades and homicides on the highway that connects Mexico City with Acapulco, causing uncertainty and fear among travelers along the way.
However, visitors continue to arrive by road, like the Salazar family, who for a moment thought about canceling their vacation, but now enjoy the beaches without fear.
Or like Francisco, who was encouraged to visit the Bay of Santa Lucía because his brothers convinced him.
For this holiday season, the authorities and businessmen project revenues of over 5,000 million pesos (almost 295 million dollars), with 56.7% hotel occupancy in the first half of the year, 8.9 percentage points more than in 2022.
