tourism

Have to agree with your realistic approach and would like to add: Yes, AI is a major ofrce in the tourism industry now. People want convenience ("take care of me" and value (most bang for the buck) and they perceive AI is where they get these things.

Someone commented on making it with a business in a 4 moth tourist season. Yes, very true. Either you have to have something very exclusive so you can charge the big bucks OR you have to find a way to stretch the season. Is there any marketing to winter season in S. America? A far stretch I admit but just a suggestion. Start off with economy priced tours and go from there.

I'm confident my experience living in this and other tourist resorts for over 40 years is 100% more accurate than your all's idle musings from afar. I do genuinely find them amusing, but it somewhat surprises me to find you defending the predatory practices of Ixtapa's AI hotels that all of us here in the business agree are the problem (except of course the participatory Ixtapa hotels), and I can only guess there's a bit of cognitive dissonance involved on your part since you all possibly stay at such resorts either here or in other destinations.

But we don't just have a 4-month tourist season. That 4 months you refer to that is simply one of our tourist seasons. We also have a 2-month summer tourist season, and pretty much year round weekend tourism. Most of our business actually has little to nothing to do with foreign tourist season. More money is typically spent here in the 4 weeks comprising Xmas/NY and Semana Santa/Semana de Pascua than during the 4 months foreign tourists are here.

As for the "major force" of AI and the "plenty of other lodging options", apparently you fail to appreciate Zihuatanejo-Ixtapa's historical niche in the market as well as you appear unaware of how Ixtapa's tourists come to Ixtapa.

Let's take the last part first. The great bulk of Ixtapa's tourists actually buy a package they see advertised or are sold by a travel agent. The great bulk of Ixtapa's tourists are one-time visitors unlikely to return or who otherwise feel no compulsion to return due to anything unique about the area. If they return it is strictly because they find it cheap and easy. And those typical AI visitors could care less whether they were in Ixtapa or Acapulco or Cancún or St. Pete Beach.

Guess what. We could care less about them. I could care less about them. They don't do our economy any good. Quite the contrary, only Ixtapa's corporate-owned chain hotels seek such bottom-of-the-barrel mass tourism, and it shows and that is why Ixtapa's commercial area no longer enjoys the prosperity it once did.

As for those "plenty of other lodging options". Those are the folks I enjoy working the hardest for. Those are the folks who don't get the one-time visitors but who historically attract repeat visitors who develop an appreciation and an affection for the local culture. But they don't get here via the typical travel agent or package deals found advertised. Those lodgings have to work quite a bit harder to find their clientele, and they are constantly being shoved aside by the folks trying to sell potential tourists packages, including the type of marketing our governmental tourism departments make. The owners of those "other lodging options" are often folks who live here with their families and who are participatory members of our community, spending their income here unlike the corporate owned hotels whose profits immediately leave town never to return.

AI is killing both the Ixtapa commercial centers as well as "those other lodging options". That is something I've long known and observed that is finally being generally accepted by the rest of the locals paying attention to our local tourism industry, an industry that unfortunately isn't well understood even by many folks who have been working and living off it for many years. For years too many local folks watched yet said nothing while AI became the norm for the Ixtapa waterfront high-rises. Pretending not to notice the cancer that was killing Ixtapa's restaurant business. AI certainly has its place in the market, but only either as an OPTION for hotels located near a variety of restaurants (such as Ixtapa's Hotel Zone I) or in the case of hotels located far away from restaurant areas, such as the Azul Ixtapa, the Club Med or the Qualton (Ixtapa's Hotel Zone II). Unfortunately the great majority of Ixtapa's Zone I beachfront high-rise hotels don't offer an option. They are now exclusively AI, but Ixtapa was built and developed for hotels that weren't exclusively AI, and hundreds if not thousands of other jobs depended on that non-AI business. And that's the problem.

And excuse me if I'm not one of those capitalists who believes that the end justifies the means: that anyone who creates a job is a good guy. Because the same can thus be said for organized crime and cartels and brothels.