Q & A with Luis CerdaTourism Director in Mexico´s Puerto Vallarta

by Consuelo Elipe

Leading the travel industry in a destination like Puerto Vallarta is a major challenge for anyone since this is no doubt one of Mexico´s most sought-after spots among international tourists. That´s the assessment made by Mr. Cerda who, as a matter of fact, is getting his big break in this job. On his goals and projects –both in the long and short run- he talked with Caribbean News Digital in this exclusive interview.

CND: First of all, Mr. Cerda, we´d like to congratulate you for your new job and ask you how you´ve managed to shift from personal secretary of Mayor Gustavo Gonzalez Villaseñor to Puerto Vallarta´s new tourism director.

LC: This has been quite a distinction the Mayor of Puerto Vallarta has given me and honored me with. I now feel more committed to Puerto Vallarta from this major office that´s linked to Puerto Vallarta´s number-one income source. I believe we must build the underpinnings of tourism´s future development in this neck of the woods.

CND: Puerto Vallarta is Mexico´s second-largest travel destination. What´s the biggest challenge you´ll have, he most important thing to do from that chair?

LC: As a matter of fact, we´re now the number-one travel destination in the country, given the current situation that Cancun, Cozumel and the Mayan Riviera are going through. For the rest of the ongoing year, we´re planning to wrap up some of the projects sketched out by the former tourism director. We´ve got a number of major events coming up and others that are now underway, such as the Gourmet Festival, the Fishing Tournament, the Golf Tournament and the Film Festival.

This year we have a pretty tight agenda. We´ve got plans to keep occupancy rates in the neighborhood of 98 percent during the ongoing high-peak season. As we speak, Puerto Vallarta is boasting all-time highs in occupancy rates. I believe informing tourists is the key to better preparedness, so we´ve already talked with the highway patrol, the local fire department and other public services in the municipality to provide tourists with everything they deservedly need.

CND: Talking about tourists, what should be done to give them a much brighter picture of what Puerto Vallarta is actually like?

LC: We must hold on to the image of Puerto Vallarta painted by the current administration of Mayor Gustavo Gonzalez Villaseñor. As you probably noticed, the city´s main street is very clean and in pretty good conditions. The palmettos are gorgeous, and so are the gardens. We ought to keep up the good work that the municipality´s public services have done in every aspect and field.

As far as the downtown area is concerned, we´re also doing our own there in terms of providing better safety to tourists, even though this is one of Mexico´s safest cities. As to the improvement of roads and highways, we´re working on a number of projects aimed at cutting down on traffic and wrapping up the Hidalgo Park´s parking lot, that must be finished a few days from now for its Nov. 12 grand opening. We´ll set up information booths for tourists. The main office for that particular purpose is right here, yet we´re going to mount a new one next to the Seawall, plus another one –talks for that one are still underway- along the New Seawall. There, tourists could get all the information they need about what Puerto Vallarta has to offer.

CND: Do you have any new plans in store for 2006?

LC: You bet. I´ll be huddling with the Mayor in a few days, but you can rest assured that we´ll continue pushing prom travels ahead. The Mayor is planning to tour a few European cities that harbor a good deal of potential trippers for Puerto Vallarta, as well as other places in Central America and South America, say, Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina. These are all major outbound travel strongholds, so to speak.

CND: As you know, our publications are headquartered in Spain and spread across Europe. I´d like to know whether you´re going to continue working in this direction and whether we´ll one day see a new charter flight to Puerto Vallarta.

LC: It´s up to the state of Jalisco´s tourism secretary Horacio Gonzalez Pardo to make the necessary arrangements to make that charter flight from Madrid come back to Puerto Vallarta. We´ll support everything he´ll do about that and do everything within our reach to lure far more travelers from the Iberian Peninsula.

CND: How will things play out with Nayarit in terms of tourist promotion and advertisement?

LC: We´re going to hold talks with the leader of Setujal to find out what his guidelines are. That´s also up to the state. For my part, I have no problem whatsoever to join hands with Vallarta Nayarit and Jalisco in raising promotion as long as advertisement costs are shared equally. It´ll be unfair for us to earmark a much bigger sum of money if we´re all going to benefit equally from that effort. It´s one solid destination, but we all need to do out bit in this respect.

CND: Would you like to add anything else?

LC: Just to say that we´re willing to work for Puerto Vallarta and do our best the best way know how. We´re going to invite restaurant owners, hoteliers, airlines, travel agents and people likened to the city´s travel industry to share ideas and exchange views in a bid to move ahead with the tourist development of Puerto Vallarta in a coordinated way. We want to make Puerto Vallarta the top destination in the country, not off Cancun´s tribulations, but rather based on a solid infrastructure and the best service money can buy.