After cartel violence slowed tourism this year, some tourists are saying they may choose Corpus Christi instead, but Puerto Vallarta business owners hope otherwise. <\/p>\n
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 As spring break begins, tourism leaders in both South Texas and Mexico are watching travel trends closely following recent cartel-related violence in parts of Mexico two weeks ago.<\/p>\n
Business owners in Puerto Vallarta, a popular beach destination on Mexico\u2019s Pacific coast, say tourism dipped in recent weeks after vandalism connected to a military operation targeting cartel leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as \u201cEl Mencho,\u201d on Feb. 22.<\/p>\n
Carlos Osuna, who owns Xalli Beach Club in Puerto Vallarta, said the spring break crowd has been noticeably smaller.<\/p>\n
\u201cSpring break crowd is probably greatly affected,\u201d Osuna said.<\/p>\n
Osuna said restaurants and tourism businesses have seen a significant decline in customers following the incident.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the restaurant sector, there seems to be a drop of around 50% in everybody\u2019s normal business,\u201d Osuna said.<\/p>\n
While business has slowed, Osuna said the city is far from empty and activity has begun to rebound as conditions have returned back to normal.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot to say we\u2019re empty because this is our peak season, but there is, relatively speaking, a significant drop in activity,\u201d he said. \u201cThere were quite a few hotel cancellations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tourism officials in Puerto Vallarta say the city remains safe, open and welcoming to visitors. Torres stressed that no civilians or tourists got hurt during the incident.<\/p>\n
Daniel Torres, who leads Puerto Vallarta\u2019s hotel association, described the Feb. 22 violence as “an isolated incident.”<\/p>\n
\u201cPuerto Vallarta is continuing as normal,\u201d Torres said.<\/p>\n
Torres added that strong flight connections to major Texas cities like Dallas, Houston and Austin continue to keep tourism flowing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe United States is our most important international market, and Texas plays a very important role for Puerto Vallarta,\u201d Torres said.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, along the Texas Gulf Coast, tourism leaders say spring break activity is ramping up.<\/p>\n
Marnie Pate at Port A Escapes has worked in the local tourism industry for 16 years. She said bookings are currently strong.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are up for spring break, just because it is that time of year and weather is great right now,\u201d Pate said.<\/p>\n
Pate said the demographic of visitors on the island has shifted in recent years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a time when it was mostly families,\u201d she said. \u201cWe felt like the majority of the college kids were maybe down at South Padre or in Galveston or something like that, but there are a lot here now.\u201d<\/p>\n
From Puerto Vallarta to the Corpus Christi and Padre Island, coastal communities heavily rely on spring break travel, one of the busiest tourism periods of the year and a key driver for both of their local economies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After cartel violence slowed tourism this year, some tourists are saying they may choose Corpus Christi instead, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":["post-199093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi-headlines","tag-corpus-christi-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}