By José Antonio Pérez
The Puerto Peñasco Convention and Visitors Bureau (OCV) announced Puerto Peñasco continues to show strong tourism numbers during the periods stretching from Spring Break through Semana Santa. The annual trek to the beach for Spring Break, which could be felt mostly in mid-March, pointed to approximately 140,000 visitors to the area from March 3rd – 20th. Similarly, the busiest weekend of Mexico’s traditional Semana Santa holiday (Holy Week – Easter weekend) saw around 100,000 visitors to the area.
OCV Director Héctor Vázquez del Mercado notes these numbers reflect the ongoing success of the vacation period in Puerto Peñasco, which has been seen particularly over the past 6 years. He detailed statistics illustrate 6% annual growth in the number of visitors to Puerto Peñasco, noting by mid-March this number had already reached 360,000 (not including reports from Semana Santa). He also emphasized an at least 10% growth in vehicle crossings at the Lukeville-Sonoyta border entry this year, further highlighting an increase in tourism from abroad.
Despite unfortunate incidents that caused a total of five fatalities over Semana Santa in particular, the OCV President deemed the extremely busy vacation period to have fulfilled overall goals. He reiterated while Semana Santa illustrated progress has been made in certain areas, additional work is required in others, such as ensuring the water supply, monitoring 4-wheelers and other dangerous vehicles, as well as controlling the number of music groups commonly known as “bandas”, and the large congregation of people around them.