BoOm Report from Tianguis
Story and photos by Bob Schulman
Each year, thousands of people in the travel business flock to Acapulco for an event called “Tianguis,” a word borrowed from the old-time Aztecs meaning marketplace. Ancient traders gathered in Acapulco to dicker over things like feathers, corn and chocolate; today, tianguistas haggle over hotel rooms, airline seats and things to see and do on the ground.
Most of the modern-day wranglers are suppliers of these commodities, known as travel “products”; the others are called “buyers” -- wholesalers who purchase the products in bulk, then package them for sale to the public through retail travel agents.
You might see an ad in your Sunday paper offering “five nights at the exclusive so-and-so beach resort at Cancun for just $495 including airfare and airport transfers.” The price of this air/ground package is typically hundreds of dollars less than if the individual components were bought separately.
Seeds for deals like this are first planted at the Acapulco Convention Center at Tianguis where the suppliers' products are displayed at hundreds of booths staffed by representatives of Mexico's resorts, hotels, airlines and cruiselines. Buyers sniff out the products and negotiate prices for the ones they think will be attractive to their particular markets.
This year's four-day exhibition was peppered by press conferences at which journalists – including a reporter from BoOm – were brought up to speed on the latest developments on the Mexican tourism scene. One of the big showstoppers was the unveiling of a new tour combining tastes of the “new” Mexico and the “old” Mexico.
Here's how it works: You'll first fly to the modern resort at Ixtapa to soak up the sun for a few days on the beaches there, after which you'll hop into a van for a three-hour ride to the 7,000-foot-high colonial city of Patzcuaro. Spend a day and a night exploring the city's famous fountains, plazas, churches and shrines, before going further inland for a lunch break in the four-century-old town of Celaya. A tip: don't miss that city's notoriously sweet caramel candy
From Celaya, the tour goes on to its final stop at the art mecca of San Miguel de Allende, where you'll rub elbows with expat painters, sculptors, writers and other artists who've been going there to study, play and open galleries since the mid-1940s. Thousands of retirees have moved in, too, many drawn by the ambiance of the art culture in an old-world colonial setting.
It's worth your while to stay a couple of days in San Miguel before flying back to the U.S. from either of two international airports in the region.
More info on the tour: www.delsolalcorazon.com
At another press conference, officials unveiled details of the ultra-luxurious Banyan Tree Cabo Marques being built near Acapulco and targeted for a “soft” opening this November. Known for its Asian-flavored brand, the resort will feature four dozen private villas – each with its own pool – dotting the hills above the bay. Banyan Tree's first property in Mexico opened last year on the Caribbean side of the country in the posh Mayakoba development on the Riviera Maya.
Reporters were also briefed on a new super-resort set for construction on the Pacific coast at a place called Las Cabras in southern Sinaloa. Envisioned to be twice the size of Mexico's huge resort at Cancun, the Las Cabras project will stretch out along 30 or so miles of golden beaches. It'll even have its own international airport.