Lack of investment is causing Acapulco's decline

Acapulco falls into decline due to a lack of investment. Aging urban infrastructure keeps away international tourism, which is attracted by destinations with new lodging facilities.

Lack of investment is causing Acapulco's decline
Insufficient investment has caused Acapulco's decline. Photo by Føur ✞ Łoko / Unsplash

The port of Acapulco is falling apart and yet it will host the 46th edition of the Tourism Trade Fair (Tianguis Turístico), an event that allows the promotion and marketing of Mexican tourism destinations, products, and services, where it has been losing ground due to lack of investment to improve the tourism infrastructure.

Even though this destination is a cosmopolitan city, governments come and go, without taking into account that the constant use of the roads generates natural wear on the road surface, so that the conditions of the roads do not allow the normal flow of vehicles, since most of them are in bad condition due to the lack of repaving.

The most affected areas are the coastal road Miguel Alemán, Cuauhtémoc Avenue, and Ruiz Cortines Avenue, where "potholes" appear due to the deterioration of the asphalt because they are subjected to a constant vehicular load and this increases the poor condition of some sections, which are the cause of vehicular accidents.

To this must be added that since the port was impacted by hurricanes Paulina, Ingrid, and Manuel, the collectors that were built to capture the drainage waters collapsed, and since they have not been repaired one hundred percent, these cause runoffs that contaminate the coast and the beaches of the bay, denounced the environmentalist Bernardo Salas Roldán.

Another of the problems that have become the Achilles heel of the municipal president, Avelina López Rodríguez, is the open-air dumps that have caused the Federal Commission for Protection against Sanitary Risks (Cofepris) to maintain the sanitary alert since the "black spots" continue to be unresolved despite the purchase of 35 new garbage collection trucks.

The most unfortunate thing is that time is running out, the Tianguis Turístico, formerly called the International Fair of Hotels and Tourist Agencies of Acapulco, will receive international buyers from various countries, who will meet with Mexican tourist service providers, to make appointments and will not be able to hide the reality of the port of Acapulco, where violence is another negative point.

It should be noted that this tourism fair, which brings together the main companies dedicated to the industry, incoming service operators, tour operators, and international travel agencies, was created in 1975 and was a permanent venue until 2011 when the former President of the Republic, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, made it itinerant, changing the venue in 2012 so that each year it is held in a different destination and returns to Acapulco every two years.