Merida recorded 1.5 million visitors in 2017, Mayor Renán Barrera Concha reported…//
In the next three years, between 8 and 10 new hotels will be inaugurated in the capital of Yucatan, which are already in process, so Mayor Renán Barrera Concha warned of the need to train personnel that will be required to work in that industry, which registers a significant growth trend.
“If we do not work now to train the staff and to look for young people who can be linked to the tourism sector, there will not be enough people to be hired in the next growth spurt the city is going to have,” said the municipal official at the inauguration of the Tourist Employment Fair.
In the last year they opened 32 new hotels in the Yucatan capital, and according to the trend it is expected that in the next five years there will be 13 thousand rooms.
Faced with this promising panorama, Barrera Concha committed to offer more attractions, festivals and cultural activities in public spaces of the city, in order to convince visitors who overnight to stay a second night.
“It would be an important economic benefit for the city, surely we will achieve it next year,” the mayor emphasized, adding that the city’s colonial history and gastronomy makes the difference.
“The important thing is that the people who visit us (in 2017 we reached one and a half million tourists) recommend the city, which produces a multiplier effect,” he emphasized.
Accompanied by the president of the Mexican Association of Hotels of Yucatan, Hector Navarrete Medina Barrera Concha led the opening of the event which brought together 35 companies from the hospitality and restaurant industry that offered 250 vacant jobs as waiters, bartenders, chefs and maids.
The growth of tourism activity demands more and more personnel, especially in high seasons, and companies are struggling to fill the available vacancies.
“This situation has been a concern for the tourism sector, because with the lack of personnel there is a lot of turnover, which generates instability, and it’s good that we have an oversupply of employment, but now what we have to see is that these positions are well paid,” he said.
Text: Manuel Pool
Photo: Courtesy
