PHOTO: Puerto Vallarta expects 131 cruise ships to call this year. (Courtesy of the Puerto Vallarta Tourism Board)
The Puerto Vallarta Tourism Board is expecting a busy cruise year with a 16 percent increase in ship calls scheduled over 2014. And that comes on top of a 43 percent increase last year over 2013.
The board said 131 cruise ships are expected to call this year with about 317,210 passengers. The four cruise lines that visit most often, in order, are Norwegian, Princess, Carnival, and Holland America.
Sixty-two cruises have already visited this year during the busy winter season with 20 expected in the June-to-September low season. Forty-nine additional cruise calls have been confirmed for October to December.
The increased cruise business is good news for Puerto Vallarta, a top tourist destination that received some negative publicity in May after some unusual violence by drug gangs went down in the state.
Although the U.S. State Department updated its travel warning for Mexico on May 5, Puerto Vallarta tourism officials emphasize that it did not include the city of Puerto Vallarta itself. The warning pertained to rural highways in the State of Jalisco and areas that border states to the south, almost 250 miles from Puerto Vallarta - or the distance between New York and Boston or Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
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