«Rethinking Tourism»
By Francisco Peyret
A few decades ago, airline travel was not all that common, and for many inhabitants of the world, it was a luxury. The airplane was a place where you could eat and drink very well; indeed, you could even smoke. But over the last 30 years, the dynamics of global air travel exploded, low-cost airlines became popular, and the frequency of business and vacation travel reached unthinkable numbers. According to the World Tourism Organization, 1.4 billion people traveled outside their own country for tourism purposes in 2019 (pre-pandemic). By 2030, the number is expected to reach 2 billion. For Mexico, the pre-pandemic number of visitors almost doubled over the last 20 years, from some 23 million to more than 40 million.
Tourism evolved thanks to three fundamental market factors:
1. Changes in the social vision of the world, i.e., a change in behavior in the way we consume.
2. The evolution of the means of transportation and also the introduction of new technologies.
3. The emergence of new means of communication and technology as a promoter of change.
According to Datatur, in 2014 Guanajuato ranked fourth nationally, received about five million international tourists, and in that year, San Miguel surpassed the barrier of 1 million national and international visitors, increasing from 500,000 visitors in 2010 to almost 2 million in 2018. Unfortunately, the pandemic arrived and the tourism sector—one of the most-affected globally—collapsed.
According to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), from January to November of last year, 28.1 million international tourists entered Mexico from abroad, a number still far from the 40.3 million that the country received during 2019. Recent figures published by the federal government announced that this summer we reached levels similar to before the pandemic.
But this does not mean that the tourism sector is recovered. Almost all tourism companies lost assets and were forced to incur debts, so the recovery is slower than it seems. Many transformed their business models to adapt to the new market conditions. Fortunately, San Miguel benefited because the regional market of the Bajío, and visitors from Mexico City found our destination as a safe place to spend vacations in pandemic times.
Now the questions we have to answer today are these. What are we doing differently to get back the number of tourists we received in 2018? Do we have new strategies that allow us to adapt to new market demands? Let’s just think a little about the problems we have in terms of urban mobility, availability of natural resources, and, primarily, water. I believe that we must take advantage of the economic situation to manage the municipal territory in a different way in order to achieve sustainable tourism development. Otherwise, we are destined to receive masses of tourism around the historic heritage center.
Although the effects of the pandemic are far from over, there are data and trends that allow us to draw certain conclusions for the future. If current trends continue, it will take years for the Mexican tourism sector to fully recover, and the economic devastation that has hit the sector hardest could end up filtering through to the rest of the economy. It should not be forgotten that tourism is the number two economic sector in the generation of foreign currency (dollars), with the first currently being remittances sent by Mexican workers from the United States to their relatives living in Mexico.
For now, the main recommendations made in international forums for the recovery of the tourism sector are as follows:
1. Promote domestic attractions. The more natural the attractiveness of a destination, the more likely it will attract travelers from other parts of the country.
2. Dependence on air transportation and proximity of regional airports. San Miguel has the CDMX airport three hours away but has five industrial cities less than 1.5 hours away.
3. Avoid dependence on business travel. Since business travel is going to take longer to recover, cities and destinations with greater dependence on business travel are more severely affected in the medium term.
4. Sustainability. Travelers are increasingly aware of the size of their carbon footprint when they travel, and some are beginning to base their travel decisions on environmental issues.
In the framework of World Tourism Day, with the slogan «Rethink Tourism,» the World Tourism Organization marks the following sectors as global tourism trends: natural tourism, regenerative tourism, community tourism, beaches and secluded places, and community gardens. It also proposes the integration of communities into the digital world.
San Miguel has a large territory with many historical, cultural, natural, economic, and human resources, and many entrepreneurs and good businessmen are already promoting them. And what options do you like?
