Monday, July 21, 2008
On 'Mexicanizing' Cruise Ship Tourism & Floating Casinos
By Kent Paterson
Long established on the boardwalk of downtown Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, artist Rosa Elena Isidore paints and sells
peaceful, soothing scenery on a street that’s not so tranquil anymore. As the midday tropical sun starts to peel off
the skin, cruise ship visitors swoop into downtown in air-conditioned buses equipped with video screens and ice-coolers. Navigating
the cobblestone streets, which are still better suited for donkeys than autos, is a challenge amid the careening buses and
the bulging waistlines of hundreds of parading foreigners.
Shepherded along by English-speaking guides, the tourists file past businesses, especially the silver and Cuban
cigar stores that display logos of the cruise ship lines and discount offers.
In town for a quick look – and preferably a hefty purchase – the visitors don’t have time to
chat with people like Isidore. Until the tour companies stepped in about 7 years ago, the circumstances were different, Isidore
recalled. More cruise ship passengers wandered on their own, even taking time to talk with the street artist. Sitting across the street from a new Starbuck’s, Isidore said the changing nature of cruise ship
tourism exemplifies Puerto Vallarta’s transformation from a fishing village into a booming international destination
with high-rise condos, big box stores, traffic congestion and crime.
“It’s sad, but that’s the way things are in Puerto Vallarta,” Isidore lamented. “It
used to be more of a Mexican town.”
A 34-year resident of Puerto Vallarta, California transplant R.C. Walker, along with his neighbors, has found a
solution to the daily chaos that unfolds when the tour buses swamp the streets below his office. “We just don’t
go downtown,” Walker said. “We try to skip it.”
Cruise ship dockings in Puerto Vallarta have soared from 144 ships carrying 164,967 passengers in 1994 to an anticipated
276 ships with 589,000 passengers in 2008, according to Mexico’s Secretariat of Communications and Transportation (SCT).
The Puerto Vallarta cruise ship surge is part of an international boom. The Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA),
a US-based trade industry group, reported in a 2008 market study that 9.57 million US residents traveled on cruise ships in
2007. Another 33.7 million were expected to sail the high seas on cruise lines in the next three years, CLIA projected.
Nowadays, more US citizens than ever form their impressions of foreign lands, peoples and cultures via a cruise
ship experience that typically lasts only a few hours. And sometimes, as in Puerto Vallarta, what they encounter is not so
much different from the landscape at home.
A Cruise Ship Mall
Completed in early 2007 with an estimated $41 million price tag, Puerto Vallarta’s new cruise ship terminal
can simultaneously dock three ships. Symbolizing the importance of the project, President Felipe Calderon inaugurated a facility
he said would benefit “many, many Mexicans.” According to the SCT’s projections, the expanded cruise ship
tourism will generate $800 million for Puerto Vallarta during a 20-year period.
Resembling a complex of seafaring skyscrapers protruding from Banderas Bay, the Puerto Vallarta terminal is a sprawling
compound that’s shielded by fences topped with barbed wire. The Mexican navy is deployed nearby to respond to any possible
terrorist attack, an issue which has grown since 9-11.
Descending onto the terminal grounds for a few hours in paradise, cruise ship passengers quickly bump into curio
shops, Internet cafes, organic coffee stands and $70 massage services. Preparing lattes at a small café, worker Karla Vianney
said she is grateful for the employment opportunities Puerto Vallarta and its cruise ships offer.
Next to the terminal, Dr. Martha Rodriguez runs her dental clinic. Advertising $35 teeth cleanings, the dentist
serves Filipino cruise ship workers and US tourists increasingly pressed by costs at home. After only four months on the job,
receptionist Blanca Torres said she’d already become acquainted with return patients who sail down the coast for a dental
tune-up. “It’s very expensive in the US,” observed the young worker.
Strategically located across the street, Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club, and Liverpool beckon the non-stop global shoppers.
For the intrepid, drugs and sex peek around the corner, and for the truly enthralled, a Remax real estate branch can literally
procure a piece or two of Mexico.
Some locals complain tourists are spending less money. An energetic man with a lot to say about the history of
his home town, independent guide Felipe Ibarra said tourists are reluctant to plop down even $25 or $35 for a personalized
tour of Puerto Vallarta and its environs. Lately, the dialogue between Ibarra, who counts 40 years in the business, and penny-pinching
visitors has become oddly strained for a Mexican port, he said.
“I want to see Wal-Mart,” is a common refrain Ibarra said he hears from cruise ship visitors.
“You don’t have Wal-Mart in the US?”
“I want to check prices.”
At the terminal, tour buses scoop up passengers for day excursions into town or the surrounding countryside. Closer
to ship, a romp on a “pirate ship” is available.
Befitting the package tourism model, many passengers’ itineraries are scheduled before they leave ship. Bus
companies, many controlled by outsiders, transport guests who purchase specialized day trips in advance. Based in Leon, Guanajuato,
TTUR is a leading tour operator. The firm is owned by Flecha Amarilla, one of Mexico’s flagship mass transportation
companies. Another company that operates in Puerto Vallarta, Arthur’s Adventures, has its home office several hours
away in Guadalajara.
Parked alongside the terminal’s driveway, independent taxi drivers and tour guides compete with the sleek
tour buses. Acknowledging that he and his men have benefited financially from the terminal expansion, taxi owner Alfredo Torres
said they still must struggle with the tour companies that he estimated snatch 70-80 percent of the passengers who get off
ships.
Complaints that the bigger tour operators suck up a disproportionate share of the cruise ship business are far
from confined to Puerto Vallarta.
Although her small store is not far from Acapulco’s cruise ship terminal, Marcelina Celestino Martinez, a
seller of beach attire, meets few of the visiting passengers. “Tour buses take Americans to the other side (of the city).
They don’t leave the Americans here with us,” she lamented. “That’s the problem. We can’t make
money from the Americans because the same ones that take them elsewhere earn a commission.”
Whether in Acapulco or Puerto Vallarta, the cruise ship experience is an increasingly managed one: pre-purchased
schedules, pre-selected shops and pre-planned departure times to the next port.
Even some cruise ship passengers are taken aback by the herd tourism.
“You’re very limited in what you can do in a few hours,” said Minnesotan Chris Hanson after a
quick-stop tour of Puerto Vallarta’s picturesque neighborhoods. “We haven’t seen the part where real people
live.”
Once their day is finished, cruise ship travelers like Hanson are transported back to the terminal where they must
run a post 9-11 gauntlet of private security guards who operate metal detectors, search bags and check ship-issued identifications
before allowing the passengers back on board.
The scene in Puerto Vallarta is repeated across Mexico every day. Rated Numero Uno for cruise destinations in the
world, the number of ship passengers visiting Mexican waters doubled from about 3.2 million people in 2000 to 6.4 million
in 2007, according to numbers provided by the Florida Caribbean Cruise Association (FCCA), another trade industry group.
Mexico’s federal Secretariat of Tourism (Sectur), reported income from the industry rose from $201.3 million
to $487.5 million in the same 7-year period. To court the tourism, the Mexican government is spending tens of millions of
dollars in tax monies to construct terminals and maintain port infrastructure. Twenty two Mexican ports now host cruise ships,
and federal officials have plans to make the cruise business even bigger.
A Big Fuss for Little Money?
For all the fuss, cash from cruise ships represents a small portion of Mexico’s overall tourism earnings.
Using bigger numbers than Mexico’s federal government, the FCCA estimated that cruise ships contributed $565 million
and created 16,000 jobs in all of Mexico during 2006. Last year, however, Mexico
earned $12.9 billion from international tourism and about $70 billion from national tourism, according to Sectur. Nationwide,
the tourism industry as a whole employed about 2.4 million people, the federal agency reported.
Depending on the location, different studies have shown that cruise ship passengers spend $60-$80 per person on
visits, though many residents of both Puerto Vallarta and another destination, Zihuatanejo, contend the real figure is much
lower. This compares to Sectur’s estimate that the average, non-cruise ship international tourist spends $750 in Mexico.
In perhaps another example of sagging economic times, even the ubiquitous tour buses in Puerto Vallarta are witnessing
a business downturn. According to SCT statistics, 9,518 bus tours with an average 60 passengers each were expected to run
in 2008, compared with 8,569 tours with an average 72 passengers each in 2007.
Michele Paige, FCCA president, said the economic benefits of cruise tourism can’t be gauged by a single visit.
A survey done for her organization reported that 86 percent of cruise ship passengers indicated they will return to Mexico
for another visit, she said. Cruise ship visits should be viewed as a “viable opportunity” for an ongoing tourism
that leaves money which goes “directly to the people,” Paige contended.
To date, however, no comprehensive evaluation of the public investment costs versus the overall economic benefits
of cruise ship tourism has been made publicly available and widely debated. Besides the upfront-costs of infrastructure development
and the ongoing costs associated with providing security, minimal information about the environmental impacts is available.
Currently, the Puerto Vallarta terminal receives between $9-10 million from the cruise ship lines for docking fees
and water sales to ships, said Ivan Uriza, SCT marketing director. In 2007, the facility sold 170,284 cubic meters of water
to the mammoth boats, Uriza added.
In Puerto Vallarta, the SCT maintains that it is careful to inspect boats, monitor cleanings, promote waste minimization,
assure proper garbage disposal and practice waste separation for recycling.
For its part, the cruise ship industry publicly boasts of its adherence to green practices like wastewater recycling,
but the big commercial ships consume scarce water resources and leave behind garbage.
Cruise ships burn fossil fuels, emit greenhouse gases and ultimately contribute to local traffic congestion. Like
any big vessel, they carry invasive species that can ruin local ecosystems. And to make way for the big ships, bays are dredged.
Another downside is that the cruise business is far from a reliable source of income, operating almost like a floating
runaway shop that changes schedules and routes depending on national and international market conditions. In an era of economic
turmoil and escalating fuel costs, the industry’s ability to keep transporting record numbers of US passengers to Mexico
could be challenged in 2008 and 2009.
In some Mexican communities, proposed cruise ship dock expansions have generated stiff opposition on both environmental
and economic grounds. Opponents blocked a proposed homeport for the Mexican Caribbean island of Cozumel in 2004, and successfully
halted a plan to put a large terminal in small Zihuatanejo Bay in 2008.
For Mexico’s federal government, though, the cruise ship industry is a winner. In April 2008, the Calderon
administration signed an agreement with the governments of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua aimed at attracting
even more cruise ships. A new pro-cruise ship organization uniting the countries could be launched later this year.
In a wider context, expanding the cruise industry fits into the rebirth of Plan Puebla Panama. Renamed the Mesoamerica
Project at a June meeting in Mexico, the goal of the government-sponsored, multilateral plan is to hasten the economic integration
of Central America and Mexico.
“Mexicanizing” Cruise Tourism
Meanwhile, tourism officials seek to “Mexicanize” the country’s cruise ship business, which until
now has been virtually foreign. The new initiative will involve the construction of one or more home ports for Mexico-based
ships. The SCT’s Ivan Uriza confirmed that his agency is studying the possibility of locating a home port in Puerto
Vallarta. Frequently called “Arizona’s Beach” because of its proximity to Phoenix, Puerto Peñasco on the
Sea of Cortez is also mentioned as a possible site for a future home port.
“We want to be an attraction for the national market,” Uriza said.
In a jump start of the home port strategy, the Spain-based Pullmantur Company, associated with Royal Caribbean
International, is scheduled to begin sailing its “Ocean Dream” boat up and down the Mexican Pacific Riviera later
this year. Promoters are specifically targeting Mexican customers, and have reportedly signed an agreement with Mexican travel
agents to sell cruises.
Based in Acapulco, the 1,350 passenger ship will make a 7-day excursion with stops in Zihuatanejo, Manzanillo,
Puerto Vallarta and Cabo San Lucas. Heaping praise on local officials and businessmen for landing “Ocean Dream,”
Sectur Secretary Rodolfo Elizondo said the cruise ship will “strengthen the Mexican Pacific Circuit.”
Cruising on the “Ocean Dream,” passengers will have access to bars, restaurants, swimming pools, a
tax-free store and a library. Mexican officials, however, downplayed the casino on the ship.
Legally prohibited in Mexico, Las Vegas-style casinos are a controversial issue in the country because of fears the
gaming enterprises will facilitate money laundering and other forms of lawbreaking. Since the 1990s, proposals to legalize
casinos, opposed by the Roman Catholic Church and other sectors, have died in the Mexican Congress.
Nonetheless, a de-facto legalization of gaming is rapidly underway in Mexico. Issuing scores of permits in 2005,
Mexico’s Interior Ministry, then headed by presidential hopeful and current Senate President Santiago Creel, eased the
way for a plethora of new sports books, bingo parlors and slot machine palaces to open up across the country, though none
of the new businesses approached a full-blown casino. Drawing Mexican tourists onto floating casinos would allow a new generation
of gamblers to do something legally at sea they cannot do on land.
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Research for this article was supported in part by the Fund for Investigative
Journalism
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Frontera
NorteSur (FNS)
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico
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Kent Paterson is the editor of Frontera NorteSur. Reprinted with authorization from Frontera NorteSur, a free, on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news source.
