Before the pandemic, Tourism was one of the fastest growing economic segments in Mérida, with the arrival of new investments in the last five years, the city’s hotel sector is now paralyzed.
Barely a dozen of them remain open and their guests are people who, for some reason, work in the state for the health sector, airlines or other.
The president of the Mexican Association of Yucatan Hotels (AMHY), Héctor Navarrete Medina, reported that the activity in the hotel sector is at the minimum of operation, only 12 hotels or so maintain operations in the city of Mérida.
He explained that the operation of these businesses is mainly driven by the fact that they have permanent guests, personnel from companies that must stay in the city for different functions, and personnel from the federal Ministry of Health.
He noted that there is no precise data on the number of people staying; However, it is established that, in the vast majority, they are Mexican nationals.
The accommodations are medium-sized hotels, with 40 or 50 rooms, while other smaller hotels that normally rent their rooms per month, also remain open.
AMHY says the people who are still in the hotels in Mérida are visitors from Mexico City, Puebla, Veracruz and Jalisco, only one of them is foreign, he works as manager of an international company with a factory in the Yucatecan capital.
The businessman reported that most of its 180 associates closed their operational activities in the face of the contingency caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, so they would be in a position to return to activity until the summer season.
On the subject of “Covid-19” Hotels, he recalled that the federal secretariats of Health and Tourism will be in charge of enabling these properties in the city of Mérida, which would become alternatives to care for, or protect those infected with coronavirus. In the event that public and private hospitals collapse by the number of infected patients.
He added that when the time comes, it will be the hotels near public and private hospitals that can be enabled by federal and state authorities.
On the other hand, Navarrete Medina, commented that they will also hold talks with state authorities to seek financial support that allows hotel businessmen to maintain payments to their employees for the duration of the health contingency.
He pointed out that the intention is to impact in the least possible way the more than 20 thousand employees of the hotel sector in the state of Yucatan, for which they expect government financial support.
