Tourism entrepreneurs have set their sights on Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Peru to promote the Yucatan destination to increase the flow of South American visitors.
Colombia is the first country in this block of potential future markets.
The Mexican Association of the Tourism Industry in Yucatan (AMIT) and the Tourism Business Council (Cetur), with the support of the Ministry of Tourism Development (Sefotur), will promote tourism with travel operators and hold meetings with the media from April 1 to 3 in the cities of Bogotá and Medellín.
The president of AMIT, Rosa Isela García Pantoja, reported that the main objective of the trip to Colombia is to promote and strongly position the tourist destinations of Yucatan.
South America is a natural market because of the Spanish language, and its economic, industrial, and commercial growth, and traveling to Yucatan is cheaper than to Europe.
“We are going to open doors in Colombia, it is our natural market, we are going to make strategic alliances with tourist operators, and increase the offer because in the tourism fairs, they always offer the same, when in Yucatan there is an enormous diversity of attractions,” explained the leader.
“It is a comprehensive presentation of Yucatecan tourism in Colombia: we not only have the traditional attractions such as the archaeological sites, the beaches, and the cultural city of Merida, but we also have the conditions to organize congresses, conventions, and a rich nature tourism.”
Rosa Garcia recognized that the promotion of the Yucatan destination in these South American countries is due to the low tourist influx and the lack of campaigns that project the state in this part of the American continent.
“It is important to point out that the tourism sector is one of the strong pillars of the Yucatecan economy, 12.1% of the population participates and 9% are providers of tourist services such as hotels, tour operators, tourist guides, transporters, conventions…”.
“Meanwhile, the restaurant industry contributes only 3.1%,” she said. “We agree with Cetur that it is vitally important to promote Yucatecan destinations to these countries. It is the best way to involve businesses and tourism service providers so that they offer their products directly, since at tourism fairs only advertising is distributed for the same thing.”
Rosa García reported that when they spoke about this initiative to Sefotur, they appointed the Undersecretary of Sustainable Tourism Development, Raúl Paz Noriega, to join the group of 12 businessmen who have already confirmed their participation in the tourism meetings in Bogotá and Medellín.
She also highlighted the joint work between the government and the private sector and the presentation of the tourism offer of the interior of the state and Mérida “because if tourism does well, other sectors of the population do well.”
For AMIT and Cetur, tourism promotion is important and if it is low in these times, the business community – being the one that invests in the businesses – has to contribute its grain of sand to conquer new markets, mainly in the five countries where they have set their sights to attract international tourism.
“Colombia is a growing market in Mexico, it has a lot of presence in industry and commerce, and it can open the doors to South American tourism,” he said. “It is our natural market because of the language, it is very important in the economic part and the price of flights is lower than if they were to travel to Europe.”
“We know that taxes in Mexico have made travel more expensive, but the diversity of tourist products in Yucatan is very attractive. The new products that we have will allow us to remain competitive in the activity.”
Other attractive countries where they want to have a greater presence and offer Yucatan destinations are Argentina, Brazil, Peru, and Chile. They are potential markets for Yucatan, especially the Chilean one, which is a very strong market due to its economy and culture.
