At this week's press conference, the Riviera Maya Hotel Association's president, Conrad Bergwerf, announced that he anticipates ten percent of the region's hotels to reopen by June 1, 2020, provided that the state restarts its activities in time.
Speaking alongside the association's director, Manuel Paredes, Bergwerf met with media to discuss the present state of the sector and its immediate future, post-COVID-19, reported Riviera Maya News.
Bergwerf said that the association expects to be able to confirm these reopenings by no later than May 15. Fifteen of the organization's 140 member hotels have already signed up to open their doors on June 1, with the rest indicating that they will reopen as customer demand increases.
The Riviera Maya Hotel Association's representatives explained that, in addition to the pandemic, the local economy and tourism sector is also being impacted by factors like the U.S.' electoral year and its trade war with China, but said that it expects the situation to have become relatively stabilized by year's end.
Although the area only currently has only five hotels in operation to host stranded travelers and house essential workers, with occupancy rates barely reaching four percent, Bergwerf speculated that hospitality in this Mexican Caribbean locale could reach 100 percent operational capacity by the end of 2020, with estimated increases in demand building toward December. Still, factoring in the current crisis, "If we reach 30 percent annual occupancy, it will be a good number," he explained.
Riviera Maya Hotel Association Treasurer, Néstor Ospina, stated that most of the region's 140 hotels will require financial support in order to reopen, and that he anticipates full recovery could take between eighteen and 24 months. The association takes heart from the fact that none of their affiliated hotels have notified them of bankruptcy or indicated an inability to reopen, and assured that, "everyone is waiting for better times."
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