Travel News
Threat Of Violence Looms Over Mexican Open Tennis Tournament In Acapulco
The Association of Tennis Professionals (APT) is warning its top-ranked tennis stars not to leave their hotels during the Mexican Open because of a string of violent killings in Acapulco.
Tennis superstars like David Ferrer, Fernando Verdasco and Stanislaw Wawrinka have been told not to explore Acapulco after gunmen killed four cab drivers and three passengers over the weekend.
Five drivers were discovered dead in their cars during the same time frame. One of the drivers had been beheaded.
The violence has made Mexican Open organizers nervous and prompted some tennis pros to stay home.
The violence in Acapulco has, for the most part, taken place outside of the touristy regions of the city. On Sunday, however, a man’s mangled corpse was found outside an apartment in the city’s tourism zone.
The spread of violence into these areas could represent a serious and unwelcome threat to Mexico’s tourism: an almost $12 billion industry that accounts for nearly one-eighth of the country’s total economic activity.
Despite the well-publicized drug-related violence in Mexico, travel and tourism has held up well, rising 5.3% in 2010 after a swine-flu-related dip in 2009.
Though 2010’s $11.87 billion tourism haul was off from the heights of 2008, when revenues hit almost $13.3 billion, steady growth in cruise traffic and longer stays by visitors in tourist hotspots like Cancun and Puerto Vallarta more than offset a drop in visitors to the (relatively violent) border regions.
By Adriana Padilla & Matthew Calcara for PeterGreenberg.com.
Related Links: New York Daily News, Daily Mail (UK), Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times
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