Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Sept. 4, 2026 — Travel-related Google interest in Puerto Vallarta reached its strongest sustained post-pandemic level in January 2024 before declining through summer 2026.
We reviewed the worldwide Google Trends series for the Puerto Vallarta topic under the Travel category. January 2024 registered a score of 42.
Outside a one-month spike in February 2026, it was the highest monthly reading after the 2020 travel collapse.
Every completed month from March through August 2026 scored below the same month in 2025. August ended at 22, while preliminary September data through Sept. 3 fell to 20, the lowest since June 2020.
Local impact across Puerto Vallarta
The index offers one measure of online travel attention for hotels in Marina Vallarta and the Hotel Zone. The reading is also relevant to restaurants along Olas Altas and Basilio Badillo, and tour operators near the Malecón.
Google Trends does not count reservations, visitors, jobs, or local spending. Separate tourism data, however, also shows weaker activity compared with 2025.
Puerto Vallarta International Airport handled 12.1% fewer passengers in July than a year earlier, according to the airport operator’s monthly report. International passenger traffic fell 29.8%, while domestic traffic rose 0.6%.
Our previous reporting found that Puerto Vallarta hotels ended July near 68% occupancy, below the July 2025 level.
Coparmex has also reported more than 35 business closures in Centro and Zona Romántica since late May.
Those figures measure different parts of the local economy. They do not prove that weaker Google interest caused the airport, hotel, or business results.
In a June interview, Jalisco Tourism Secretary Michelle Fridman said Puerto Vallarta was still feeling some impact after February’s security disruption.
“We’re expecting Canadians to come back in the next high season,” Fridman said.
A decline from the 2024 high
Puerto Vallarta’s travel search pattern usually rises during winter and falls during summer. Comparing August with January would therefore exaggerate the decline.
We compared each 2026 month with the same month in 2025. Across March through August, the average Google Trends score was about 11% lower this year.
The January reading also declined after 2024. Interest was lower in January 2025 and fell again in January 2026.
The series contains one clear exception. February 2026 rose to 100 before falling to 28 in March. This was an outlier as web users searched Google for cartel violence in Puerto Vallarta from February 22 to 28.
Without that spike, the chart shows travel interest building through the post-pandemic recovery, reaching its strongest point in 2024 and weakening afterward.
How Google Trends measures interest
The chart covers worldwide Web Search from Jan. 1, 2020, through Sept. 3, 2026. We selected Travel and the broader Puerto Vallarta topic labeled “City in Mexico.”
Google says topics combine related searches across languages and spelling variations. That provides a broader measure than searches containing only the exact words “Puerto Vallarta.” The data includes searches for “vallarta”, “pvr”, and misspellings.
“Numbers represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart for the given region and time,” Google states.
Google normalizes a sample of searches and places the results on a scale from zero to 100. The index measures relative interest rather than the number of searches conducted.
A score of 20 does not mean 20 searches. It means the relative interest was one-fifth of the chart’s peak level.
When we removed the Travel filter, the broader Puerto Vallarta series did not show the same decline.
The data supports a narrower finding: sustained travel-related Google interest rose into 2024 and weakened afterward. It does not establish that Puerto Vallarta’s total tourism, visitor spending, or economy peaked that year.
