Puerto Vallarta, the premier tourist destination in Jalisco, is preparing a marketing campaign aimed at getting visitor numbers back to pre-pandemic levels by the end of the year.

The campaign will target potential tourists in the United States – the main source country for visitors to the Pacific coast resort city – Canada and Mexico’s largest cities.

The Jalisco government will contribute 100 million pesos (US $4.6 million) to the efforts to revive tourism in Vallarta, located on Banderas Bay just south of the Nayarit border.

Jalisco Tourism Minister Germán Ralis told the news website Forbes México that authorities are hopeful that tourists will start returning to the city over the summer.

However, the marketing campaign will try to attract visitors to Vallarta in the fall and winter months, he said.

Ralis said the campaign will primarily target potential tourists who live in cities where it takes no more than four flying hours to get to Vallarta given that there is unlikely to be much appetite for long-haul trips while Covid-19 remains a threat.

He said that Puerto Vallarta, “our star destination,” and other tourism hubs in Jalisco – among which are state capital Guadalajara and the town of Tequila – will be especially competitive in the United States market.

Ralis also said that Jalisco has signed an agreement with Zacatecas, Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, Guanajuato and Aguascalientes to encourage residents to take short interstate trips.

The tourism minister said that some Jalisco hotels will offer three-nights-for-two promotions and that some restaurants will also offer special deals to create an “integrated experience” for visitors from within Mexico and abroad.

Some nonessential businesses in Jalisco that were ordered to close due to the coronavirus pandemic have begun reopening but the state’s economic restart has been surrounded by confusion.

Jalisco had recorded 2,136 Covid-19 cases as of Wednesday of which 790 are considered active. The metropolitan area of Guadalajara has recorded more than 1,000 confirmed cases while 276 people have tested positive in Puerto Vallarta, according to the federal government’s Covid-19 municipal map.

Source: Forbes México (sp)