Although the economic reactivation has already been carried out, the hotels in Jalisco, not counting Puerto Vallarta, are with few clients and no reservations, only 12 percent occupancy out of the 25 percent allowed at this time, said Juan Carlos Mondragón, president of the Association of Jalisco hotels.
He recalled that initially there were 86 hotels, of all sizes, which closed voluntarily due to the lack of demand temporarily and only 16 remain unopened. 70 have already opened their doors.
“The issue here, rather than the issue of opening or not opening, is that there is no demand, we continue with occupations of 12 percent and with $1,000 pesos of average rate per night, so that’s where the issue is stuck,” he announced.
Mondragón mentioned that the hotels are open and are still without clients because, despite the mobility that has already been authorized, they have not managed to attract guests and they reserve around three percent, and hopefully the numbers will change soon.
He mentioned that the accumulated occupation during the pandemic is the same percentage that they have at the moment of 12 percent, so even with the ‘new normal, things have not changed for hotels.
“The lowest part we have had was 9 percent occupancy,” he said.
As an example, he put the average of last Friday and Saturday at 13 percent and Sunday at 10 percent, with no data that they could rebound next weekend.
The hotelier’s representative mentioned that the outlook is sad because the pandemic has not subsided, more cases occur every day and people are taking care of themselves.
“The companies are not letting their executives travel, not yet, even people who normally would think that by removing the restriction they were going to rush out of travel, look at the Guadalajara Metropolitan Area, Chapala, and Tequila, they still do not see travelers,” he said.
The projection for the end of the year is calculated between 24 and 25 percent of occupation when last year it was 60 percent, Mondragón described the situation that appears as “disastrous” and “worrying”.
When asked of how much more can the owners of the hotels with such a low occupancy hold on to their business, the president of the organization mentioned that there is no answer because everyone is measuring their strength seeing what happens and what will happen in the future; Even Guadalajara’s landmark, Expo Guadalajara, is closed until September or October.
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“There is not much encouragement on the part of the hoteliers, the protocols are already fully complied with, now with this new phase we are ordered to have only 25 percent availability, but we did not even get to that,” he said.
Mondragón explained that the most important thing, in the end, is that people take care of themselves so that the infections stabilize and lower the curve of the epidemic, but this is not the case yet.
He bet on observing how the market behaves this weekend or the next few days to see if it reacts and the numbers improve because reservations are currently only 3 percent.
