San Miguel de Allende, a World Heritage city and quintessential tourist headquarters in Guanajuato, has been especially affected by the health contingency.
The indications to carry out almost complete closings to its operations have caused that of a total of 140 hotels, only five operate under a minimum occupancy of 5 percent of guests.
According to estimates of the economic spill generated by tourism in previous months, the losses would be in the millions.
“We are calculating that monthly we are losing around 160 million pesos,” said Laura Torres Septién, president of the Tourist Citizen Council at SMA.
“The lack of visitors has also affected trade, handicrafts, transporters, restaurateurs, among others, which is why a reactivation strategy is already being designed for when the quarantine is over, which will consist of reactivating regional tourism for later focusing on the national market”, she said.
“San Miguel needs to take advantage of being in the center of Mexico, of being a cultural tourism destination along with Guanajuato capital and having commercial tourism in the city of León”, Torres Septién continued.
“We believe that wedding tourism will be the first sector to be reactivated, because people still want to get married, that will not change and it will always be every woman’s dream,” she added.
“For the moment, the priority is to take advantage of the support of the state government to the business sector, to maintain the tourist structure through the preservation of jobs, so that, when the time comes, the reactivation will flow more quickly”, declared the president of the Tourist Citizen Council.
“We are working on online campaigns to stay in the “Top of Mind” of the tourists, so that they keep remembering San Miguel is waiting for them,” she explained.
Regarding his participation in the committee of 10 businessmen who will oversee the application of the credit for 3 billion pesos from the State Government for companies, she stated that the multidisciplinary nature of those who make it up, will allow proper representation. “All of us who participate in this committee are people who come from different areas of industry, service and commerce,” concluded Torres Septién.
San Miguel Times Newsroom
