Puerto Peñasco tourism office: Summer tourism up from last year

The tourism sector in Puerto Peñasco, or Rocky Point, saw spring-break cancellations this year after a brief spate of violence elsewhere in Mexico. But numbers appear to be bouncing back this summer, according to the Puerto Peñasco tourism office.

Puerto Peñasco expects around 500,000 tourists this summer season, which officially wraps up later this month. That’s a slight uptick from last summer’s tourism numbers, according to the director of the Puerto Peñasco tourism office, Lizette Ibarra.

It includes tourists from elsewhere in Mexico, as well as the many who cross the border from Arizona.

“They are preferring to spend their vacations here in Rocky Point because it’s close, our beaches are clean, there are a lot of activities that we have to offer,” Ibarra said.

Overall, Puerto Peñasco’s hotels are expecting about a 30% occupancy rate for the summer season, slightly higher than last year’s 28% rate, Ibarra said.

Ibarra estimates close to a million tourists have visited Puerto Peñasco since the start of the year.

Keith Allen with Encátame Towers says the resort has been sold out most weekends this summer. That’s after cancellations earlier this year from the outbreak of cartel violence in the Mexican state of Jalisco in February.

“If there’s a scare, an incident, something happens, usually four to six months later people are seeing on social media that people are coming down here, having a great time, and then they come on down here and go back to their previous habits,” Allen said.