Mar, Sol, Arena y FantaZIHa

Excerpt from surfguy post

" My experience is anecdotal, but everyone I know who has gone to Zihua loved it specifically because it's not Disneyland, Cancun, Cabo, or Acapulco. It may not be what you experienced 20 years ago, but visitors still find some rural charm and it might benefit your clients who advertise here if you were to embrace that and find the silver lining."

Time flies by, as Jimi said:
"Move over Rover and let Jimi take over".

Generations come and go.
Trying to hold on to & maintain conditions and circumstances as they were in the past as it was, is a tough job.
The 60s, 70s were my favourite years, but they're done, and only live on thru music, photos, memories, and other objects from those years. Even when I play songs, for example from 1965 and show others who may not know that music how good it was (and still is), it's NOT going to be 1965 again.
That's gone and done.

Our kids are now in power, and may have different concepts and philosophies than we had, or still have. Trying to "go with the flow" as the new and upcoming generations have it, may be uncomfortable, and for some not particularly desirable either.

While there certainly is nothing wrong with us who are now "senior citizens " trying to conserve what we believe to be the good things from the past, we may have to keep that for ourselves and not try to oblige people of the younger generations, to think as we did and may still do.

On the other hand: "Father knows best"

Yes, one important change is that children are no longer raised learning manners. Instead parents place them at the dinner table with an electronic tablet in front of them and let them play video games instead of interacting and learning from the adults. I've seen generations grow up like that here, losing the manners and social skills of the previous generations, and the knowledge. We have generations here who have learned that stealing land and blocking roads for personal grievances is acceptable. But the young people who miraculously give a crap about doing things right and building upon the work of the past look for clues and wisdom. Yes, it's their world. But look what our generation did with our world to see the folly of your argument. Even though we knew decades ago we were going to screw up the planet with our greed and arrogance, we went right along doing the same things. Now there's more plastic in the oceans than marine life, and children grow up with diseases caused by their environment that didn't even exist when we were young.

When planning an economy, the goal should be collective prosperity and sustainability. Experience is a priceless repository of wisdom. In my personal experience living and working in many different kinds of tourist destinations, I've learned from watching what has worked and what hasn't, what has made conditions better and what has made them worse. Depending 100% on tourism, what we have here, is a crap shoot. Tourism is fickle. An event on the other side of the world can cause tourists not to travel to a particular destination.

Mass tourism mostly attracts one type of tourist. They don't give a flea fart about the destination. One place is the same as another. They just want a hotel room on the beach and for the sun to shine. Targeted tourism attracts a totally distinct type of visitor. One that often feels an affection for the destination for its uniqueness and other qualities. The latter type of tourism put Zihuatanejo on the tourist map and brought more prosperity to Zihuatanejo than the current practice of mass tourism is doing. Mass tourism is destroying this place as cheaper tourists spend less money, and speculative development gambles their money buying up parcels, erasing native vegetation, pouring cement and building condos, timeshares and cookie-cutter vacation lodgings. I've watched this happen numerous times, ruining idyllic natural paradises and turning them into snake pits of human abuse, places no decent person wants to live to maintain a cheap source of labor for the cheap lodgings the masses want. All these "new" tourists seek are what they call "los tres B". Bueno, bonito y BARATO. Zihuatanejo does not prosper with this type of tourism, although the sheer numbers guarantee that a few cheap hotels and certain well-placed restaurants will indeed enjoy some level of prosperity while the rest of the community doesn't.

So you'll have to excuse me if I stick with trying to attract a certain type of visitor, weeding out the undesirables, and espousing my views about a possible and preferable future than the current road we're on. Part of getting and keeping this preferable class of visitor is being able to provide them with more than cheap beachfront lodgings and sunshine. They want a bit more luxury. They like to be able to wander the beaches, restaurants and bars without fear of violence. They like to be able to sleep at night without the thump thump thump of boombox cars and open-air bars. They like to visit places with more trees than concrete. They do not like having their belongings searched going to the beach or being told not to bring their furry family members.

And personally I prefer that my local representatives respond to the needs of the community instead of being intolerant of criticism while they fill their pockets with the taxpayers' money.