Meagan Drillinger
Los Cabos is readying to package and promote 10 off-the-beaten-path experiences designed to take travelers outside their luxury hotels and into the sights and sounds of the destination.
These experiences will be featured on a dedicated website, according to Rodrigo Esponda, managing director of Los Cabos Tourism Board. "The experiences will be different things in the destination that have not been integrated into the unified product," he added.
The experiences will include tours of Todos Santos, the surrounding mountain ranges, sculpture tours in San Jose del Cabo and more. The new experiences have the potential to be packaged by DMCs and tour operators for well-rounded, cultural experiences in and around Los Cabos.
"For example, there will be a full-day experience that combines local art with organic gastronomy, with farm-to-table cuisine and dedicated tours of local artisan studios. This tour will be called Art to Table," said Esponda. "This is what we are doing to enrich travel to the destination, because with the level of sophistication of hotels and product that we have, we need to be doing that at the same level across the experiences."
The new website will be unveiled the second week of November.
The tourism board has also launched a new industry website at industry.visitloscabos.travel. The website is meant to be a one-stop resource for agents to learn about Los Cabos, complete with pictures that they can download, videos, guides and maps. There is even a chat system where agents can interact directly with the tourism board. "We want to drive every single tool available in technology and in person so that agents can learn and help us to communicate properly," said Esponda.
Growth and development
Los Cabos has long positioned itself as a luxury destination, and that continues with the opening of Solaz, A Luxury Collection Resort Los Cabos, which debuted last week. In a couple of months Mexico's first Nobu-branded hotel will open, and soon to follow will be St. Regis, Four Seasons and a Ritz-Carlton Reserve. Hyatt has also announced a new project, which will open in 2020.
The previously named Costa Baja residential and resort community was recently purchased by Ascendancy and has rebranded it as Puerta Cortez. The development, just outside of La Paz, features two residential communities, a golf course, views of the Sea of Cortez, a marina, restaurants, and yacht charter tour operators.
"We're envisioning a robust 2019 in terms of numbers," added Esponda. "The average daily rate is increasing, and airline analysis has been showing that there is an increased interest to Los Cabos, which will generate more airline increase next year. We are confident that in 2018 we will see growth in number of seats."