No Tourism Plan to Open Puerto Vallarta & Riviera Nayarit on June 1 Eugenio Ortiz Carreno - Vallarta Opina
go to original May 26, 2020

Despite the intentions to return to the “new normal” on June 1 when the National Sana Distancia Day ends, businessmen from this region made it clear that a specific plan for the reopening of hotels and beaches has not yet been integrated to tourism.

This was made clear after the meeting held at the Visiting House in Nuevo Vallarta, where important hotel businessmen and public officials from the Riviera Nayarit gathered.

As stated, for example, the President of the Association of Entrepreneurs of Puerto Vallarta and Bahía de Banderas, Jorge Villanueva Hernández, “urges” that the authorities of Jalisco and Nayarit agree to make a decision on the reopening of the conurbation tourist strip.

He noted that there should be a plan to open Puerto Vallarta and Riviera Nayarit in a different way, since both states have different situations regarding the pandemic, and there must be an elaborated plan that involves the cooperation of the authorities.

He explained that “hoteliers have been talking and opening 10 to 15 or 20 percent, testing the protocols that already exist, no one is sure that a protocol will work … this is unprecedented, but we are ready to start. Although to mark the beginning, it does not depend on the will of an executive, it marks the epidemic development of a municipality.”

However, he said, "he sees indecision" on the part of the governments of Jalisco and Nayarit to orchestrate an orderly reopening of both destinations, "which must have tested the health protocols 10 days in advance" before June 1, something that clearly did not happen.

For his part, the Secretary of Sustainable Development of the Government of Nayarit, David Guerrero Castellón, opined that the most complicated issue is the reopening of the beaches, since, although they are open places, large concentrations of bathers are generated when the reopening occurs.

"The problem is the agglomeration, the concurrence of the people," he explained, pointing out that a check must be made on the influx of people to measure the ability to receive tourism to a point of relative health security and not saturation, something that, recognized, depends on the organization between both state governments, Jalisco and Nayarit.

"In the case of the tourist area, the problem of the flow of motorists from Guadalajara is considered, which right now is important, but nothing to do with what one would normally have. The governments of the two states must agree on that, we have a metropolitan tourist area, between the two states of the Republic, the most important in the country, "said the official.

Still, most hoteliers insist on the reopening on June 1, due to the fact that the health protocols that they usually used with the personnel that work in their complexes "were enough", and it would be a matter of knowing what the federal authority's adjusted updates suggest.

Edited and translated by Team Angels

Read the original in Spanish at Vallarta Opina.