Border article, SA Express - News

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Article in SA Express-News - key phrase is ""But business owners on both sides of the border believe the violence and official warnings obscure a simple fact: law-abiding visitors who stick to well-trod tourist destinations during daylight hours rarely have problems. "I just don't feel our tourists are in any kind of danger," said Fassold, noting that her family's company still makes daily tours to Matamoros, across from Brownsville.""



Drug wars slashing Mexico tourism


Sean Mattson
Express-News Mexico Correspondent

MONTERREY, Mexico — The last thing Debra Fassold's travel business needed was another warning to tourists about violence in Mexico.

But it came last Monday, when the State Department updated its travel alert for Mexico, telling U.S. visitors to be cautious due to continued narcotics gang violence south of the border.

Recent years of violence along the Texas-Mexico border — and the bad press about it — have hammered Fassold's family-run, South Padre Island-based Original Tours Co., which takes tourists to the border cities of Matamoros, Nuevo Progreso and deeper into Mexico.

Business is off by about 40 percent from a few years ago, Fassold said.

"Any time that the government posts one of those advisories, the warning flags go up for the traveler," she said.

Mexican drug gangs have caused at least 2,000 deaths in each of the past two years and are well on their way to a third consecutive record year of bloodshed even as President Felipe Calderَn has deployed soldiers to curb the violence.

Northern Mexico has been hit particularly hard, with outbreaks of violence in most major border cities. The occasional resulting shootouts have been "equivalent to military small-unit combat," the State Department alert noted.

Ciudad Juلrez, across the border from El Paso, is the current hot zone, accounting for perhaps as many as 200 of Mexico's estimated 900 narco-slayings this year.

But business owners on both sides of the border believe the violence and official warnings obscure a simple fact: law-abiding visitors who stick to well-trod tourist destinations during daylight hours rarely have problems.

"I just don't feel our tourists are in any kind of danger," said Fassold, noting that her family's company still makes daily tours to Matamoros, across from Brownsville.

Nightclubs along Avenida ءlvaro Obregَn, the main drag in Matamoros connecting its 19th-century downtown to Gateway International Bridge, once attracted from 20,000 to 30,000 Spring Breakers each March, said Valerie Pizzuto, a tourism representative with the city's Chamber of Commerce.

Last month saw only about 1,000 college partygoers, she said.

Few Americans visit, except people visiting their families and medical tourists visiting doctors, Pizzuto said, so the avenue is acquiring dentists, pharmacies and beauty parlors aimed at the new tourism niche.

Official statistics from the Tourism Ministry show that border tourism is in trouble.

Last year was the second-worst in the past 20 years, with 8.4 million visitors, according to the agency. Tourism ebbs and flows, but that figure is down from a high of 12.5 million visitors in 1995.

As for cash flow, border tourism income has dropped from a high of $644 million in 2005 to $624 million in 2007.

One of the people who has stopped making trips to Nuevo Laredo is Sandra Llewellyn, owner of AJ Travel in San Antonio.

Llewellyn used to spend the weekend shopping and dining with friends in the border city across from Laredo, but safety concerns ended that tradition.

But business at some major resorts is booming, including Cancْn, many neighboring destinations on the Caribbean side of the Yucatلn Peninsula and Puerto Vallarta on the Pacific, she said.

"Our only problem with Mexico is we can't get enough seats to go there," Llewellyn said.

Once an image is battered, though, it is hard to bring visitors back.

Violent, strike-driven teacher and leftist protests damaged culturally rich Oaxaca city, in southern Mexico, in 2006. A number of people, including American journalist Brad Will, were killed, and the city's famous Guelaguetza festival was canceled that year.

Discontent that fueled the protests still simmers, but tourist services are back to normal, said Ernesto Gutiérrez, president of the city's chamber of commerce.

Attendance at last year's Guelaguetza was off and hotel occupancy during this year's Easter holidays was between 70 percent and 80 percent at a time when hotels are normally full, he said.

Monterrey, a northern Mexican metropolis a two-hour drive south of Laredo, still is fighting image problems after a surge in narco-violence last year rattled the city and its business community.

Business representatives in border cities insist that their tourist districts are safe.

سscar Marquez, of the chamber of commerce in Ciudad Juلrez, noted, as most authorities and business leaders do, that the bulk of the violence is caused by gangsters fighting each other.

Tourism ministry officials were unavailable for comment for this story but regularly downplay the effect that violence has on Mexico's $10 billion international tourism industry.

International tourism revenue in Mexico falls shy of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's estimate of $13.8 billion annual earnings by drug gangs there, as reported by the Associated Press. Other estimates have been far higher.

Tourism growth by number of visitors in Mexico has been flat in recent years. Total international tourists peaked at 21.9 million in 2005 but have hovered around 21.4 million each of the past two years.

Most industry experts agree that a drop in the drug violence is what tourism needs to boom again.

"My heart goes out to those people over there who ... survive on American tourism," Fassold said.