ViZIHta VIP

There is talk of having a makeshift terminal for busses in the Troncones area to bring in tourists for the day.

The bus tourism allows the politicians to claim inflated numbers of tourists and to take credit for something that isn't true. Our numbers have gone up in Zihuatanejo with the bus tourists, but the truth is most of them don't make any unnecessary purchases, and they certainly don't buy handmade dresses and shirts that cost thousands of pesos like our tourists used to do. Some make purchases at local shops, and we're grateful to them, but counting warm bodies to simply claim increased tourism is a very misleading trick politicians like to use to try to take credit for them when the real income perceived by locals from tourism continues to plummet. Our daily sales in Zihuatanejo are nowhere near where they were prior to all the violence that mostly began here around 25 years ago or even 15 years ago when the beaches started getting certified and families with pets felt they were no longer welcome. We continue losing the high-spending tourists because of the changes in Zihuatanejo trying to imitate Acapulco, Vallarta, Miami Beach, Los Cabos and Mazatlan. Now we're just another cookie cut from the same mold, and too many of our tourists don't really care where they are as long as there's booze and beaches, a huge difference from the tourists we used to get who came because Zihuatanejo wasn't like those other places. All-inclusive continues cheapening our local economy and hurting the locally owned lodgings the same way all the Oxxos are killing off the locally owned convenience stores. A damn shame to see such a gem such as Zihuatanejo get tarnished and cheapened by short-sighted greedy politicians and speculative investors sucking our cash cow dry.