Travel 2014: The Top Mexico and Travel Agent Stories of the Year

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For Mexico tourism, 2014 was a year of highs and lows. On a high note, stellar tourism numbers point to the destination’s recovery from the recession and lingering concerns about safety. On a low note, Los Cabos was devastated by the wrath of Hurricane Odile. That story, too, though, has a happy ending, with the destination making a remarkably quick recovery.

It was also a pretty good year for ASTA and travel agents. The Society made significant strides in a number of areas, including membership boosts, lobbying efforts and campaigns promoting the value of agents. On another note, anecdotal agent reports indicated that the unforgiving winter resulted in extremely strong bookings – the likes of which some agents said they have never seen before

Los Cabos Rebuilds in the Aftermath of Hurricane Odile

Just a little more than three months ago, Hurricane Odile made landfall in Cabo San Lucas, devastating the destination.

The Sept. 15 category 3 storm, with sustained winds of 115 miles an hour, pummeled hotels, the airport and local tourist attraction.

In record time, however, the destination dusted itself off and quickly began the process of rebuilding its tourism infrastructure. Incredibly, by the end of this month, tourism officials say 10,000 of the destination’s 14,000 room are expected to be open.

Air service, meanwhile, has returned at a steady clip, with the Los Cabos International Airport expected to be 100 percent operational by the end of the month. Also, nearly all of the restaurants and attractions are open, as are virtually all of the destination’s golf courses.

Now, tourism officials are working to get the word out that the destination is, for all intents and purposes, back in business with the #unstoppable campaign, whose hashtag is being used to document Los Cabos’ return to normalcy. “It’s inspiring, but that’s what good marketing is for,” wrote TravelPulse senior editor Barry Kaufman in a first-hand report from the destination last month. “To inspire. To welcome guests back and assure them that Los Cabos is still an amazing, exciting destination.”

Mexico Tourism Continues on Upward Swing

If this year’s stellar tourism numbers are any indicator, it appears that Mexico has, for the most part, recovered from the recession and overcome lingering perceptions regarding the destination’s safety.

As 2014 draws to a close, Puerto Vallarta is reporting one of its best years on record as the number of flights into the destination continues to rise. Flight frequencies were up 23.87 percent in October over the same month in 2013, and rose 22.6 percent in October compared to September’s figures.

Puerto Vallarta is also experiencing a significant rise in hotel occupancies. During the first half of the year, occupancies increased by 7.9 percent, and tourism officials say they expect to close the year up 13.7 percent over 2013.

For its part, tourism officials from neighboring Riviera Nayarit say the destination is also experiencing a strong year, and several new projects are expected to accelerate business even further.

By next summer, construction will be completed on the new Hard Rock Hotel Vallarta International Convention Center, the largest such facility ever built in Riviera Nayarit.

Costacapomo, a new Mexico National Trust for Tourism Promotion (Fonatur), project currently under development will include more than 3,000 hotel rooms, a 18-hole golf course and two beach clubs. The development goes hand in hand with a new Jala-Compostela-Las Varas-Bahía de Banderas highway, which is slated to open next year.

Following a 16.4 percent jump in arrivals this summer, thanks to more nonstop and connecting flights than ever before, Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo is gearing up for what it hopes will be one of its strongest winter seasons ever.

Westjet launched its winter season with thrice-weekly service out of Calgary, while Sunwing Airlines added flights from Winnipeg, Kelowna and Regina-Saskatoon. On Dec. 20, Delta Air Lines will debut new service to the destination from Los Angeles, with five departures a week.

Officials from the Cancun Convention & Visitors say they expect to exceed 2013 numbers this year, reporting a 16.7 percent increase in international visitors in the first eight months of 2014 for a total of 4.6 million international visitors compared to 4.1 million during the same period last year. The destination has also welcomed a host of new and rebranded hotels this year, which has likely played a role in boosting tourism numbers.

ASTA Woos Agency Groups, Bolstering Membership

This year, ASTA made significant strides in in its efforts to beef up its membership ranks, with a number of agency groups either voting to make membership in the Society mandatory or strongly urging their members to join.

The announcements are a clear indicator that travel advisors are recognizing the association’s efforts as essential to the viability and success of the travel agency segment going forward.

In October, Travel Leaders’ Franchise Advisory Board voted unanimously to make ASTA membership mandatory for all Travel Leaders franchisees, following similar mandates made by Signature Travel Network, MAST and the American Marketing Group, parent of consortiums Travelsavers and NEST.

Travel Leaders franchisees will be required to join ASTA within the next two years, and Travel Leaders Franchise Group will maintain its ASTA premium membership.
Signature Travel Network will now require ASTA membership in main offices. MAST will subsidize membership dues for its agency members; and the American Marketing Group, parent of consortiums Travelsavers and NEST, rejoined ASTA, encouraging their agency members to do the same.

ASTA Lobbying Efforts, Agent Promotional Campaigns, Pick Up Steam

In the last year alone, ASTA has been at the forefront of lobbying efforts against s regulations involving mandatory hazardous waste warnings for clients by agents, new distribution capability, full fare and price disclosure, travel insurance regulation, ancillary fees, “transparent” airfares, and state sales and hotel taxes.

ASTA claims to have saved the travel agency business $180 million in taxes in just the last year due to its lobbying efforts to counter new tax proposals—and that’s just scratching the surface of government and state regulations that ASTA must deal with on an annual basis.

In tandem with these efforts, ASTA also made strides in promoting the value of agents to consumers this year. For starters, the Society launched a Google marketing campaign promoting the value of travel agents, which it said has garnered more than 3.5 million impressions in the marketplace.

ASTA has also developed a series of PBS infomercials about agents that have run in 150 markets in the U.S. The association has also succeeded in increasing the traffic to its consumer Web site, TravelSense.org, which features profiles of its member agents, doubling the number of agent referrals this year to 1.3 million, ASTA said.

Harsh Winter a Boon For Travel Agents

This year’s extraordinarily harsh winter was one for the record books, and for many, best forgotten. Based on anecdotal reports from agents, particularly those with client bases in the Midwest and Northeast, the inclement weather produced another kind of record: unprecedented bookings.

Judy Nidetz of Travel Experts in Chicago said she was inundated with client requests for vacations this winter. “I usually am busy at that time of year anyway but it seemed like the phones were just ringing like crazy,” she said.

“I had a client call me from Chicago saying, ‘Get me out of here,’” said Barbara Fishman, a Travel Experts agent based in Peachtree City, Ga. “All I had to send was the 10-day forecast at the One and Only Palmilla in Cabo San Lucas,” she said, and the client immediately signed on to a weeklong vacation at the resort in early February.

Space, however, was at a premium. Nidetz booked a cruise out of Florida for a Chicago client – but flights were overbooked. “So they actually drove two days to Florida from Chicago,” she said. “That’s how badly people wanted to get away.”

Suffice it to say Nidetz and Fishman were not alone. Victoria Pandolfo, an agent with Altour in Chicago, said the agency got “slammed” this winter, with more clients traveling to farther-flung destinations like Tahiti and Fiji to ensure they really were getting out of the cold.

In addition to South Pacific destinations, agents said they sold a healthy numbers of charter flights to Mexico, including Cancun and the Riviera Maya, Puerto Vallarta and Cabo San Lucas.

Alyssa Schulke of Schulke Travel, a Travel Experts affiliate out of Minneapolis/St. Paul, cited Puerto Rico as another popular 2014 winter vacation venue, in part because passports aren’t an issue. “Because of the last-minute nature of some of the travel, a lot of my clients’ passports weren’t up to date,” she said. “Also the flights are relatively convenient and you don’t have to change money.”

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