"Los Cabos has been the leading tourism board in the world that we work with. It has not been the biggest but it been the best one by far," said ALG Vacations Group (ALGV) President Ray Snisky, who participated in the Travel Trends and 2021 Perspectives panel.
The panel was moderated by Los Cabos Tourism Board Managing Director Rodrigo Esponda and included Freddy Dominguez, Expedia Travel Group's vice president for Latin America and the Caribbean, and Jared Harckham, vice president and managing director of aviation for IFC, a global consulting firm.
"Los Cabos' ability to be timely in getting information into the marketplace on safety protocols, and being clear and decisive to move quickly has created a great opportunity for Cabo," Snisky added.
He noted that in the last four weeks ALG Vacations witnessed double-digit increases year over year to the destination. "We have had weeks where we were 30 percent higher going to Cabo than we were pre pandemic, which is fantastic."
Similarly, Dominguez said that "Los Cabos sets the bar [for] tourism boards in many parts of the world," adding that Expedia sales for the destination are currently at pre-pandemic levels.
For his part, Harckham said Los Cabo serves as the "gold standard" for communicating with the industry and regaining the trust of travelers.
To determine which destinations are faring the best during COVID-19, Snisky said "we need to follow where air capacity is moving," noting that "one of the areas that jumped off the page were Mexico beaches" in terms of such destinations as Los Cabos and Cancun."
"One of the great wins for Cancun is that they have a great amount of airlift," he said.
ALGV added charter flights out of Chicago and St. Louis back into Cancun this summer, and Snisky said he was "shocked at how well they performed," noting that "their utilization was north of" 85 percent.
"We've been able to build that back up, and we have a rather robust schedule going into 2021," he said.
With Europe currently closed to U.S. travelers "and because of the on and off way that some of the islands in the Caribbean have chosen to manage reopening processes, Mexico is leading the recovery," said Dominguez.
"The type of product Mexico offers, especially destinations such as Los Cabos, which is open and works very well for social distancing," works to the country's advantage, he added. "We're seeing it in the numbers. I'm very bullish about where travel is going to be in 2021."
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