Francisco Salas Montiel. Director-General of Tourism Promotion and Development in Jalisco

Q- Francisco, whatever happened to Pullmantur´s and the Marsans Group´s flights to Mexico, especially to Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta? What went wrong with that?

A- Well, I think at the very onset they sketched out a business plan with certain expectations. The flight to Puerto Vallarta, that particular flight, was short-lived, just reserved for a season time that ended in October, as all charter flights do on an annual basis.

In the case of Guadalajara, it was devised as a regular flight headed for Guadalajara every Friday and leaving for Madrid that same weekday. The market´s response was pretty favorable during that season timeframe, but when they noticed that response was no longer as high as expected, they dropped the flight.

For us, the most important thing of all is the chance of getting a toehold of the news media through publicity, to get a hold on an array of promotional tools to try our hand at the Spanish market. That´s the positive side of the project for Jalisco, coupled with the understanding that for all joint actions and efforts in the future, we need to set the rules with tour operators in order to be able to map out the right policies as far as season conveniences are concerned and come up with the best timing to handle the whole thing.

Q- As to the Puerto Vallarta operation, it´s been going on for the past three years with just a temporary interruption. However, businesspeople in Puerto Vallarta were unpleased with Pullmantur´s occupancy inflows to the state of Jalisco. What´s your response to that?

A- Well, tourism knows no geopolitical boundaries. You go for a particular destination without considering, as in the case of this product, whether it´s in the state of Nayarit or in the state of Jalisco.

It´s true that many visitors that this company brought to this destination checked in at resorts in Nuevo Vallarta. That´s also a wakeup call for service providers and hoteliers in Puerto Vallarta that tells them time is ripe to set better marketing conditions in the face of the kind of competition that Nuevo Vallarta is putting up. It´s also a wakeup call for them to realize that their products have to be as good as they can get with each passing day. Nevertheless, the important thing is the media hype that Puerto Vallarta got in the process. Now tourists realize the Nuevo Vallarta destination is aloof from the traditional population, from the places and the folklore tourists want to enjoy and live every day and night. And those are the things they can actually find in Puerto Vallarta.

Puerto Vallarta has benefited from all this, not only in terms of lodging, but also in terms of restaurants, entertainment places, disco clubs, nightclubs and other recreational activities. We´re absolutely reaping benefits from all this.

Q- You´re getting six-figure promotional endorsements of, say, $600,000 and $300,000 that you´ve poured into publicity efforts that are supposed to pay off any moment from now, but they could also do in this endeavor if they are cut off. What actions are you going to take to prevent this from happening?

A- The important thing here is the positioning of our product, of our travel destinations. I believe we´ve made considerable headway in just three years to put both Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara on the map as destinations where you can find out what real Mexico is all about, where you can feel the cultural values, the quirks and the lifestyle of the Mexican people.

As we speak, Tourism Secretary Horacio Gonzalez is in Spain conducting a series of seminars and working meetings with tour operators, travel agents and members of news organizations to paint a good picture of both Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara. Likewise, he´s definitely trying to portray a good image of our mountain travel destinations, of our magic villages like Tequila, our countryside, the religious site of Altos de Jalisco, our Costa Alegre that, as a matter of fact, has been making quite a splash lately in the British market. We´ve received requests to stress on our destinations in the Costa Alegre area, our boutique hotels, ecotourism spots, adventure tourism choices. The responses have been pretty good. Three new tour operators have already included Puerto Vallarta in their catalogs.

In a word, we´re keeping up the good work with Spanish tourism, cashing in on the initial efforts we´ve been carrying out for quite some time and the funds the local trusteeship, local authorities, state officials and the federal government have earmarked for this purpose. This is what actually needs to be done and I think we´ve got the edge now because we´ve managed to introduce the destination in the world market. That´s something that requires a follow-up to keep the quality of the product on the rise and start drawing tourists from sources other than tour operators and travel agencies we do business with. We must continue positioning our products in the world market and getting as much media attention as we can possibly get. We ought to strive for making regular flights come over here, for making Spanish visitors travel to our destinations.

Now we have the possibility of strengthening our spare-time publicity efforts with Mundi Polo. I´m convinced all this is going to help us put Puerto Vallarta and other local tourist destinations back on the minds of Spanish sunbathers.

Q- In the case of tour operator Halcon Travel Plan and Air Madrid, the air carrier, have you made any contacts with them?

A- Yes, we have. We´ve stressed the possibility of having flights to the Pacific Coast, chiefly to Puerto Vallarta. We´ve had several meetings with senior executives from both Air Madrid and Travel Plan, but we haven´t gotten a foot on their door with good products. Yet I think this visit our Tourism Secretary is paying to Spain is giving him an opportunity to make our case before them, show them our products and give them the chance of traveling to our destinations.

We know all along we´ve got some limitations as far as competition in the Caribbean is concerned, even though the closest point from Europe to the Caribbean is precisely Mexico´s Caribbean coastline. That´s the cheapest way of getting in touch with the Caribbean and it´s closer than, say, Jalisco. Traveling to Mexico´s western and Pacific states requires bigger jetliners with fuel self-sufficiency.

We know these situations too well, you bet we do. But I guess the good values and attractions our destinations have to offer are worth a long look for Spanish tourists. We are giving them a chance to know the real Mexico, to see the most Mexican beach of all, which is Puerto Vallarta, to tour Guadalajara´s downtown and metro areas, to buy beautiful handicrafts, to live its music and cultural values through the mariachis, to enjoy Mexican charros, to taste our cuisine and tequila, our national beverage.

Q- Isn´t it true that the Pullmantur Group had huge bunches of Mexicans traveling to Spain, I mean, that you had sold more plane tickets from Mexico to Spain than from Spain to Mexico, in this case more Madrid-bound tickets?

A- The report we got from one of the travel agencies, the Mexican operator selling the Guadalajara-Madrid product -I´m talking about Viajar, a company owned by Lorenzo Hernandez- mentioned a 70 percent occupancy in all ticket sales. That means we had a pretty good reaction on the part of Mexican tourists willing to travel to Madrid. That was a good opportunity for regional tourists that travel to western Mexico, people who avoided going to the Federal District to take a relay flight to Madrid and who had the chance of flying nonstop from Guadalajara to the Spanish capital.

I think this brought about some good results for Pullmantur Air and expectations kept flying high. However, this is how the whole thing played out and we believe in time they´ll be back to reap the outcomes of the efforts they made over here.