Mexico tries hard to help tourists forget flu

If you are looking for a cheap travel destination, try Mexico.

Short of war, the swine-flu outbreak in Mexico in the last few weeks has been about the worst calamity that can befall a country's tourism industry. Initially, the swine flu looked like a potentially highly contagious flu. Within days, pictures of civilians clad in surgical masks, like scenes from some science-fiction disaster movie, were leading newspaper and television reports around the world.

It will take a long time for would-be vacationers to forget those images, but the Mexican government is trying to help them with a multimillion-dollar campaign to restore Mexico's image. And some hotels, virtually empty of visitors, are cutting rates 50 to 70 percent.

The number of foreign visitors to Mexico already had plunged since the beginning of the year because of the sinking global economy. And graphic news reports from Mexico describing drug violence were no help. Then came the H1N1, or swine flu, virus.

Though it is impossible to know how much damage the flu will inflict in the end, Mexican officials have said that in the worst case, the revenue from foreign tourists could fall $5 billion this year.

Last year, foreign tourism earned Mexico about $13.3 billion and employed more than 2 million people.

Although the normal pace of life is returning to Mexico, the U.S. State Department as of midweek still had a travel alert in place, recommending Americans avoid nonessential travel to Mexico. (Get updates at www.travel.state.gov.)

As demand dropped, U.S. airlines have cut flights to Mexico. Continental Airlines, which has the most flights between the two countries, dropped about half its capacity.

Seattle-based Alaska Airlines is shifting routes to Hawaii and other U.S. destinations, cutting its flights to Mexico by more than a third starting in July for the summer and fall.

Major cruise ships have canceled all ports of call in Mexico; some have diverted ships north from Southern California to San Francisco and Seattle, among other ports.

"It is not necessarily the risk" to the passengers, said Cynthia Martinez, a spokeswoman for Royal Caribbean Cruises. "It's more about whether our guests feel comfortable visiting Mexico."

However, a crew member aboard a Royal Caribbean ship that cruised from San Francisco to Alaska last week was confirmed to have swine flu (and was isolated aboard the ship). Before that cruise the ship, Serenade of the Seas, had been in Mexico and made several port calls there.

Hotels empty

Hotels in Cancún, one of Mexico's most popular tourist destinations, and south along the Mayan Riviera reported that guests did not bother to cancel; they simply did not show up.

Hotel occupancy in Cancún dropped from 77 percent the day the alert began April 24 to 42 percent by the end of the month. By mid-May, it was down to about 23 percent, said Marisa Setien, the executive director of the Cancún Hotel Association.

"We did not think it would be that bad, but it was a chain reaction," she said.

Hotel occupancy in Mexico City fell to about 10 percent as the city shut down. The city's tourism secretary, Alejandro Rojas-Díaz, estimates the city is losing $10 million a day.

But he argues that the tough line the city took against the illness, closing restaurants for a week and most other entertainment, including bars and soccer stadiums, for even longer, will ultimately pay off in credibility.

"We have told the truth and when we tell the truth that the city is safe again, the world will believe us," Rojas-Diaz said. "It will be squeaky clean."

Bargains to lure tourists

That may be true, but travel agents in the United States say bargains will help.

Hotels, hoping to restore their occupancy rates, have dropped their prices sharply and that is reducing the prices of packages to Mexico, said Tim Mullen, senior president of Apple Vacations, a major tour company based near Philadelphia.

Compared with four weeks ago, packages are 70 percent cheaper for May and 50 percent cheaper for June, he said. There will be "a bonanza of good deals this summer."

Mullen said the first rush of concern among vacationers had slowed. "This week, all of a sudden it became less ominous than what was reported," he said. "Hopefully, it's a short-term blip on trips to Mexico."

The Cancún Hotel Association plans to work first with travel agents in Mexico to bring back Mexican tourists. When the global flu warnings are lifted, the association will begin working with tour operators in the United States and elsewhere.

Oscar Fitch, the executive director of the Mexico Tourism Board, said that once the United States and other countries lift travel advisories to Mexico, Mexico will start a broad campaign to bring visitors back.

"The country is closed right now, not by us, but by everybody else," he said.

Kristin Jackson of The Seattle Times contributed to this report.