San Antonio Express: Rodolfo Lopez-Negrete, chief operating officer of the Mexico Tourism Board, has a tough public relations job ahead of him.He is trying to sell Americans on vacationing in Mexico and ignoring travel advisories issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety warning of the dangers of tourists going into Mexico.
He and the president of Adventure Travel Trade Association, an international business group, were in Texas last week to deliver a letter from four travel associations representing thousands of travel agents urging Texas officials to stop portraying his country as one violent, lawless region.
Lopez-Negrete acknowledged some border areas are high-crime problems but said other areas in the center of the country and along the coasts are fine. He urged Texas officials to soften the tone of travel alerts.
That’s unlikely to happen.
It is difficult to ignore the growing causality list from the drug war raging among the various drug cartels. It is estimated that more than 35,000 lives have been lost since 2006. Most of the deaths have occurred on the border but no area of Mexico has been spared. There are no guarantees the cartels will keep any tourist area off limits.
We in San Antonio know the value of the tourism dollar. The hospitality industry is a major component of our local economy. We are sympathetic about Mexico’s tourism woes, but it would be irresponsible to ignore the facts.
If the deaths were only among the members of the warring factions, the situation would be different. But the killings have spread. Among the more high-profile deaths were the slayings of a U.S. missionary, who was shot during a highway chase, and a U.S. federal agent, who was killed in an ambush.
It is going to take more than a public relations campaign to get tourists to seriously consider Mexico as a vacation destination. If Mexico wants to increase tourism the government needs to crack the cartels.
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