SINCE ITS DEBUT IN 2001, meeting trade show and destination event Mexico Showcase and Travel Expo has grown exponentially, according to organizer Andy Ortiz, president/owner of Cancún-based Global Incentive DMC and past president of the MPI Mexico Chapter.
So when the pre-event golf tournament for this year’s event sold out with 250 attendees several weeks before the April 30 opening, Ortiz was not surprised.
“With the way the interest in the showcase has been growing over the years—attracting not only planners from all over North America but exhibitors from other Central American countries such as Costa Rica and Panama—it was no surprise at all when it looked like we were going to have really strong attendance this year,” Ortiz said.
But one week before the Cancun event, a complete surprise hit the event like a bombshell. Several dozen cases of the H1N1 virus were reported in Mexico City. Some of the victims died. The television airwaves, especially on cable news networks, filled with nonstop coverage of what was being called a growing and dangerous epidemic. The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control began advising against travel to Mexico.
In the days immediately preceding the showcase, the bottom began to fall out, Ortiz says. A wave of cancellations dropped 250 to 300 planner attendees down to around 100. The Mexico Tourism Board, one of the showcase’s major partners, suggested that Ortiz consider cancelling the event.
But in the face of all those challenges, Ortiz made what he considered one of the most important statements of his career—he decided that the showcase must go on. And it did.
“If I had thought it would be placing my attendees in danger if they came to Cancún, then I would have been the first to cancel the event,” Ortiz said. “But there had been no cases of H1N1 in Cancún, which is a good 1,500 miles from Mexico City. Telling people not to attend an event in Cancún under those circumstances would be like telling them not to go to Orlando because there was a riot or something in Los Angeles or New York City. If I had cancelled it, I would have been sending the wrong message—almost like confirming that everything that was being reported on the wildly overblown cable television reports was true.”
So, Ortiz and his staff started calling and e-mailing attendees who had cancelled, presenting the facts to them and asking them to reconsider. As a result, about 25 attendees decided to come after all, giving the event approximately 125 planner attendees and about 100 exhibitors (down from the originally expected 200). The result was what Ortiz called “a tremendously successful event,” considering the circumstances.
“It was important because it gave a key group of meeting planners and others in the industry in the U.S. and Canada a chance to come to Cancún and see for themselves what was happening here,” Ortiz said. “It more or less set the stage for good things to come in the future. I must have had literally 40 attendees come up to me during the course of the event and thank me for going ahead with it.”
One of those planners was Jacob Ahrens, CEO of Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Travel Group Worldwide LLC, which plans and conducts corporate meetings and incentives for Fortune 500 companies and other clients.
Ahrens, who had been to five of eight annual Mexico showcases, says he hesitated about attending this year, going so far as to e-mail the CDC staff in Atlanta and ask if it recommended staying away from Cancún at that time. It did. (The CDC recommendation against visiting Mexico has long since been lifted.) But Ahrens decided to go anyway and was glad he did.
“I ended up talking to my brother, who is in the healthcare industry, and he said, ‘Jacob, it’s the flu for crying out loud! You are a healthy person with no reason to think you’d need to do anything but go home and go to bed for a few days like you normally would if you got the flu,’” Ahrens said.
The flight to Cancún didn’t do much to bolster his confidence—there were only 13 passengers onboard the Boeing 757 airliner with seats for 250, and two of those people were wearing surgical masks. But when Ahrens reached the Mexican Riviera, he felt it would be a little silly to put on the surgical mask he had brought along. No one else was wearing them, and there was no sign that anyone was sick or afraid of getting sick in the beachfront city.
“What I found was a perfectly lovely, vibrant tourism destination,” Ahrens said. “It was essentially deserted, of course, devoid of tourists because of all the media hype about the H1N1 virus, but a wonderful destination just the same. And the event itself was spectacular, with great dinners and parties and live music and entertainment every evening. They just caught a bad break because of something totally beyond their control, but there is no question they will bounce back, because this is just too compelling a destination not to. In fact, in the near term, I am strongly recommending Cancún in particular—as well as other Mexican beach resort cities like Cabo San Lucas—to my clients, because they have a lot of hotel rooms to fill there, and there are going to be some great bargains throughout the remainder of this year.”
Ahrens says that even though he has visited Cancún five times in the past eight years, one thing that continues to impress him on every visit is how the hospitality product is growing.
“They continue to build new hotels and expand existing ones, and as far as the meetings support systems—everything from exhibit halls to meeting rooms to audiovisual support to beachfront restaurants that would be right for an upscale event—you find that you are at a level that is on par with the U.S.,” Ahrens said.
Fernando Cervantes, group and conventions director for the Cancún CVB, says the city and the area around it—the Riviera Maya resort region—is now Mexico’s largest destination in terms of facilities, with 28,000 hotel rooms (of which 80 percent are four- and five-star) in 145 hotels, collectively offering 700,000 square feet of meeting space.
Cervantes says that occupancy in the days immediately following the CDC’s recommendation against travel to Mexico plummeted to 12 percent. Since being rescinded, hotel occupancy has risen to just 30 percent—at a time when it is normally in the 70 percent range.
“Most group events such as conferences and incentives that had already been booked did not actually cancel, but just postponed, but the hotels were quite good about giving refunds to those events that elected to cancel outright,” Cervantes said. “We are optimistic about business bouncing back, but realistically, it’s probably going to be 2010 when that happens.”
Another North American planner who attended the Mexico Showcase this year, Mark Dallman, regional vice president of sales for Hospitality Performance Network, says that although he had not been to Cancún before and was most impressed with the sparkling new hotels, the thing that most impressed him was the positive attitude of the people in the hospitality industry there.
“They make it clear that they really want your business, and they are eager to do whatever it takes to make every event a success,” said Dallman, who is based in Plymouth, Minn. “And in the 20 years I have been in this industry, I can tell you that attitude means everything.” One+
ROWLAND STITELER has written extensively about the global meeting and event industry.
Transportation Tip
• Cancún International Airport has added a third terminal building, increasing the number of international gates and the space for customs and security procedures. “As a result of the expansion of the facilities, we have been able to cut the time it takes to clear customs at the airport from about an hour to about 15 minutes,” said Fernando Cervantes, director of group and convention sales for the Cancún CVB.
What’s New in Cancun
• Because of the lower than usual attendance at this year’s Mexico Showcase, a second edition was scheduled for Aug. 6-9 in Cancun.
• The Hilton Cancún Golf & Spa Resort added a third ballroom to its 43,335-square-foot Peninsula Convention Center, the only beachfront convention facility in the city. The 5,665-square-foot Isla junior ballroom brings the center’s total event space to 49,000 square feet.
Fun Fact
• Before the city acquired its current name, Cancún was called Ekab, meaning “Black Earth.” Cancún is the Mayan word for “pot of snakes.”