Mexico Tourism Board Ads Say Visitors Are Safe

USA Today: The Mexico Tourism Board is fighting U.S. perceptions that it's unsafe to travel there with a new $30 million ad campaign.

Part of the campaign will feature TV ads -- due to premiere in the next couple of weeks -- that will feature real-life vacationers arriving back from South of the Border getaways. The idea: "Americans talking to Americans to communicate that it is a great place and a safe place," tourism board chief marketing officer Gerardo Llanes says.

He says those picked for the "Mexico Taxi Project" are offered a ride home at the airport and don't know they're being filmed in vehicles driven by actors. The driver asks about their stay, including safety, then cameras are revealed and riders sign papers giving permission for their comments to air. So far, respondents have been positive about their stays, Llanes says. "Most of the people say, 'Anything we can do for Mexico,' " when asked to give permission, he says. He thinks having Americans tout Mexico is more effective than "an institution" saying good things.

"We don't deny there are some spots in the country that have issues," Llanes continues, such as drug cartels run amok and crime. But he says tourist areas such as Cancun shouldn't be considered treacherous.

A website due to be up and running soon, mexicotaxiproject.com, will have ad clips and more. And Llanes says the campaign will include a social media blitz and even billboards in places such as Times Square showing vacationers having fun in the sun, live.

Gunmen Set Fire to Mexican Casino, Kill 53

Los Angeles Times: Gunmen stormed a crowded casino in northern Mexico on Thursday and ignited a fire that trapped patrons inside, killing at least 53 people in what the nation's president called an "aberrant act of terror."

The attack on the Casino Royale was the latest bout of spectacular violence in Monterrey, an industrial hub that is Mexico's third-largest city. For more than a year, the city has been the setting for a brutal turf war between rival drug-trafficking gangs that at times have held gunfights on downtown streets in broad daylight.

Adrian de la Garza, prosecutor for the border state of Nuevo Leon, told reporters that the death toll stood at about 40. Four people remained missing. Gov. Rodrigo Medina later told Mexican media that 53 had died. He said the five or six attackers apparently used gasoline to start the blaze. Officials did not give a suspected motive.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon went on Twitter to express dismay over what he called an "aberrant act of terror and barbarity."

"This is a night of sadness for Mexico," said Alejandro Poire, a federal security spokesman. "An unspeakable, repugnant, unacceptable act of terror has been committed."

Television images showed shocked patrons waiting outside as helmeted rescue workers raced into the blackened casino in search of survivors. One woman told Milenio Television that customers scattered in panic after profanity-spewing gunmen burst into the casino and ordered people to get out. In the confusion, many people trapped themselves inside after hiding in bathrooms or fleeing to an upper floor.

Emergency exits were blocked, possibly increasing the death toll, officials said.

Monterrey Mayor Fernando Larrazabal said the casino was shut down in May for code violations but later allowed to reopen after lawyers for the casino won a court order.

The woman interviewed by Milenio Television described a frenzied scene. "Four armed persons entered and began to say: 'Everybody leave! Everybody leave!' " she said. The woman said she ran out a door to a parking lot, but many others fled to the second floor of the casino.

The witness said the attackers, wearing white masks, did not fire weapons or hurl grenades, as some early news reports had suggested. "They started to throw gasoline. There was no grenade attack," she said.

At least 20 people were killed in July after suspected drug cartel members opened fire in a crowded Monterrey bar, an apparent attack on a rival gang. Much of northeastern Mexico has been besieged for a year and a half by fighting between the Gulf cartel and former allies known as the Zetas. The bloodshed has been especially shocking in Monterrey, an important business town formerly known for relative tranquillity.

Violence has exploded across Mexico since Calderon declared war on the cartels soon after taking office in 2006.

Fishing Tour Boat Capsizes in the Sea of Cortez



San Felipe

ABCNews: One person drowned and six others are missing after a chartered fishing boat capsized off Mexico's Baja California peninsula during a storm, authorities said Monday.

The roughly 100-foot-long boat, a catamaran called the Erik operated by the tourism company Baja Fishing, was carrying 44 tourists on board, mostly Americans, when it was struck by an electrical storm and then capsized early yesterday, port and Navy officials said.

The boat was found 87 miles south of San Filipe, Mexico, in the Sea of Cortez, an area usually known for its scuba diving and sport fishing.

"When the vessel sank it was close enough to shore that some people were able to swim to shore," said U.S. Coast Guard spokeswoman Pam Boehland. "Other people were picked up by good Samaritan vessels that were in the area. Others were rescued by the Mexican Navy."

While authorities say all Americans have been accounted for, the Mexican Navy, which is leading the rescue effort, will only say that "at least 27" Americans have survived. The U.S. Coast Guard launched a helicopter from San Diego, Calif. to help search for the missing.

"We are still looking for the rest of the people. The weather is really bad right now, with strong wind," said local port official Felipe Vallecillo told Reuters.

Vallecillo said weather conditions were normal when the boat set sail on Saturday.

According to an Internet advertisement, the Erik has been operating in the Sea of Cortez since 1989 and can sleep up to 42 guests.

Mexican State Wants "Beautiful" Tourist Police Force

CNN: A help-wanted ad in the Mexican Pacific state of Guerrero is drawing rebuke from some women's rights groups.

In effect, the ad says: Wanted: Women ages 18-26, who are at least 5-foot-5 and whose weight is proportional to that height. Must have good physical and mental health. Knowledge of English is a plus.

The job? A new, all-female tourist police force proposed for Guerrero's most popular visitor destinations, including Acapulco.

"The idea is to have a police force comprised of only women, preferably beautiful ones," said Ramon Almonte Borja, head of the state's public security secretariat.

In addition, he said the tourist police would wear attractive uniforms to distinguish themselves.

"We are designing a gorgeous uniform that can distinguish us like the police in London, for example, so that Acapulco can have an additional visual attraction to what we already have," Almonte said.

The want ad says that there are 52 openings for the police force, but a security secretariat spokesman Oscar Gatica told CNN their attitude is to wait and see how many women apply.

"We're indignant" over the news, said Blanca Rico, executive director of Semillas, a women's rights group in Mexico City. "Once again women are put in the stereotype of being decorations."

The state's idea for a tourism police discriminates against women who do not fit the physical mold they are looking for, she said.

What should matter is how professional they are and how capable they are of being police officers, not how they look, Rico said.

While his boss said he was looking for "beautiful" women, Gatica said that applicants don't necessarily have to fit that qualification. What they are looking for is a uniform look to their personnel, he said.

In addition to the age, height and weight requirements, the police force is looking for women without any tattoos and no piercings other than the ears.

The tourist police will not be armed, and their function will be mostly to deter crime and to act as a guide for visitors, Gatica said.

For her part, Rico said she couldn't believe that a public official like Almonte could be so crass.

"One would never imagine male police officers being selected for their looks," she said.

Mexican Towns Working to Lure Tourists

Christian Science Monitor: Nogales, Mexico. The once bustling streets of jovial, persistent merchants beckoning tourists into their shops in this Mexican town, just over the Arizona border, are mostly quiet these days, the familiar mix of Spanish and English conversation a thing of the past.

Across the US-Mexico divide, brutal drug violence has badly bruised border tourism. Even here in Nogales, with a tourist district literally two blocks from the US, the center is empty.

So city planners are sponsoring yet another public event – this one a three-day tequila festival (this weekend) showcasing Mexico's traditional drink, along with mariachis, dance performances, and a classic car show – in an attempt to boost confidence, especially among Americans, that a visit to the town is indeed not a death sentence.

 “We’d like Americans to come see for themselves that maybe Nogales is not as bad as some people say,” says Jorge Valenzuela, who was hired as the city’s first tourism director late last year.

City officials are in many ways working harder than they ever have, dreaming of new events to promote the positives of Nogales. In late 2010, they began to revive the city’s ailing tourism sector in earnest with the opening of a visitors center, street improvements, the installment of security cameras, and the addition of police patrols. This year, the chamber of commerce launched a “Let’s speak well of Nogales” campaign to help burnish the city’s image.

“We never really had to promote the city before but now we do,” said chamber director Marcela Freig Couvillier before that campaign began.

Special events continue to push the notion that Nogales is a safe place. In late May, about 500 people raced through Avenida Obregon in a 5-kilometer run dubbed “Go with confidence.”

Mona Mizell, who lives in Green Valley, Ariz., was among a handful of Americans who took part in the race. Ms. Mizell, who took first place among female runners older than 60, says she has always felt safe in Nogales.

“I really feel sorry for the business people here,” she said at the time.

And she should. Until recently, Americans strolling the main drag, Avenida Alvaro Obregon, were as ubiquitous as the vendors who hawked silver bracelets, sombreros, and leather belts.

Then Mexican President Felipe Calderón declared war on organized crime and the historically tranquil Nogales gradually began to feel the impact of drug-related violence, including public shootouts and kidnappings. In 2006, the city recorded 35 homicides. By the end of last year, the official body count totaled 202, although the local press tallied a higher count. Killings appear to be down this year but activists say the violence has touched more people with no known ties to drug trafficking.

The tourism district close to the international line remains well patrolled and largely free of violence, Mr. Valenzuela points out. But it is something that officials can no longer take for granted. Instead, they have to continue hammering out the message, be it in the form of tequila festivals and other events, and hope that Americans are hearing.

Mexico Tourism a Very Tough Sell

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.

Mexico Tries to Lure Back Tourists

Los Angeles Times: Mexican President Felipe Calderon is touting 2011 as the year of tourism, and the Mexico Tourism Board is spending millions of dollars plastering Southland billboards with images of the Great Pyramid of Cholula and underwater trees.

But the nation's deadly drug wars have led the U.S. government to widen its travel warnings in the last few weeks, throwing a wrench into Mexico's effort to attract foreign visitors. Nearly half of all available rooms in 70 major resort centers have been vacant this year, except for the Easter crowd that nearly filled the hotels for a few days, according to the tourism board.

Two days before the holiday, the State Department added four Mexican states to its list of areas to avoid. It now urges U.S. travelers — the bulk of Mexico's tourist economy — to steer clear of all or parts of 10 Mexican states, including most of the border region and popular vacation sites such as Acapulco and Monterrey.

"What's disconcerting is that these advisories are painting an entire country with a broad brush," said Terry Denton, president of the Fort Worth, Texas, branch of the Travel Leaders agency. "It just reinforces the unfortunate impression that all of Mexico is not a safe destination."

Some U.S. travel agents and Mexican officials believe news about the violence has been overblown. "Bad things can happen anywhere," said Rita Wilcox of Rocky Point Reservations travel agency in Phoenix. "But people are afraid, so even those who have the money to go might not. It's affected every business down there tremendously."

Overall, the number of international visitors has fallen 13% to 79.8 million last year from 91.5 million in 2008, according to Banco de Mexico. And the trend isn't looking any better this year: In January, 3.8 million day-trippers crossed the U.S. border into Mexico, down 16% from the same month last year.

With tourism providing Mexico its third largest source of revenue, hotel operators, tour guides and travel agencies now bemoan the U.S. alerts as yet another blow to an industry battered in recent years by a swine flu outbreak, the recession and the increasingly bold cartel activities. It was the violence that prompted the State Department advisory as well as a separate warning from the Texas Department of Public Safety urging spring break vacationers to give Mexico a wide berth.

As lawlessness escalated last year, 111 Americans were killed south of the border, compared with just 35 in 2007, authorities said. Others have been kidnapped from hotels, carjacked at gunpoint and targeted for extortion.

But most areas, tourism officials said, are safe. "This episode of violence has been concentrated in very specific pockets of the country," Lopez-Negrete said. "You're not going to stop going to New York because there's an incident in Dallas."

Salvador Gonzalez, owner of Baja Adventures & ATV Tours in San Diego, has fielded a flurry of questions from concerned American clients. "It's frustrating, since unfortunately only the bad news gets out. But Mexico is so much more than that," said Gonzalez, who leads small groups on weekend tours of sites in northern Baja California.

The State Department advisory pointed out that the violence common in border regions tends to be less pronounced in Mexico's tonier resort areas and tourist destinations.

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Mexican Tourism on the Defensive

USA Today: An expanded U.S.State Department travel warning to Mexico, issued before this week's news that 183 bodies have been discovered in a northeastern border state, is generating mixed responses in tourist spots highlighted in the new alert.

The April 22 warning notes that millions of U.S. citizens visit Mexico safely each year, and says that "resort areas and tourist destinations generally do not see the levels of drug-related violence and crime reported in the border region and in areas along major trafficking routes." But it recommends visiting "only legitimate businesses and tourist areas during daylight hours," and says that while most victims have been Mexicans associated with criminal activity, the country's security situation "poses serious risks" for U.S. citizens as well.

The new alert includes the Gulf of California resort area known as Rocky Point, popular with Arizona tourists, and the area in Mexico around the border crossing near Nogales. It also warns of problems in areas such as Acapulco, Cuernavaca (a popular destination for American language students), Michoacan's butterfly sanctuaries and capital, Morelia, and Mazatlan, where cartel-related violence has prompted some cruise lines to stop their calls.

Friday's warning was "a major red flag" and "quite a bit more expansive" than past alerts, Kathleen Fairfax, vice president for global education at Arizona State University told CNN. She said school officials will meet this week to discuss how the new guidelines might affect study-abroad trips.

But business owners and tourism boosters in Rocky Point, where spring-break reservations are down sharply this year, say they don't understand why the destination was included since the police chief shooting mentioned in the warning happened a year ago.

Reports of violence can be overblown, adds the leader of an expatriate group in Lake Chapala, Mexico. "I felt totally safe there. We had no problem at all. You have to be mindful of what's going on, but there aren't people attacking anybody, especially expats," Denver retiree Howard Feldstein told CNN about his trip last month to a butterfly sanctuary in Michoacan, a stronghold of Mexico's La Familia cartel.

"We should not take the issue out of context," Rodolfo Lopez Negrete, chief operating officer of the Mexico Tourism Board, said in a recent CNN interview. "The distances are very, very great. You wouldn't stop going to New York because of a problem in Dallas."