New Hotel Council of the Mexican Caribbean established
IAN STALKER
Seven hotel associations that together represent over 125,000 hotel rooms in Mexico’s hugely popular state of Quintana Roo have banded together to bolster the tourist trade.
The Hotel Council of the Mexican Caribbean was officially launched during Tianguis Turístico de México, Mexico’s annual tourism show, this year held in Mexico City recently. Among Quintana Roo tourism locales are booming Cancún and the Riviera Maya.
Toni Chaves, current president of the Riviera Maya Hotel Association and first president of the Hotel Council of the Mexican Caribbean, stressed that the body will bring together and represent the interests of the sector hotel industry in the Mexican Caribbean and create a common agenda to analyze the needs of the sector with the three levels of government.
He added that one of the objectives of the council will be to work in collaboration with the state government to optimize the resources invested in tourism promotion and generate more visitors to the state, which last year hosted 19 million tourists.
Chaves said the new body will seek to safeguard the interests of their investors and lobby federal authorities for a tourism agenda that allows for the solving of and expediting pending issues that require urgent attention, such as facilitating the entry of international tourists, especially when it comes to improvements in migration, customs, and elimination of visas, which allow all destinations in the Mexican Caribbean to be more competitive and offer better attention to visitors.
The president of the Mexican Caribbean Hotel Council reported that it will work more closely with the three levels of government to improve the likes of public safety, and the collection and final disposal of sargassum, as well as helping with the vacation rental sector.
Chaves also stated that the organization will strengthen union representativeness and promote its social commitment through the generation of more jobs and promoting better working conditions. “I am sure that with teamwork we will be able to successfully face any challenge and take advantage of the opportunities that are presented to us to make the Mexican Caribbean one of the most visited destinations in Latin America and the world,” he concluded.
The launch ceremony of the Hotel Council began with the welcome and presentation of reasons by Jesús Almaguer Salazar, president of the Association of Hotels of Cancun, Puerto Morelos and Isla Mujeres and one of the main promoters of the organization’s formation.
The Hotel Council of the Mexican Caribbean will have a board of directors that every six months will change its president. The current council will be made up of Chaves, as president (Association of Hotels of the Riviera Maya); David Ortiz Mena, as vice president (Tulum Hotel Association); Miriam Cortés, as Secretary (Quintana Roo Vacation Club Association) and Fernando Beristain as treasurer (Cozumel Hotel Association).
The other members of the Hotel Council are Jesús Almaguer Salazar (Cancun, Puerto Morelos and Isla Mujeres Hotel Association), Raúl Andrade (Central and Southern Quintana Roo Hotel Association) and Ramón Rosselló, from the Costa Mujeres Hotel Association.
