Hotel occupancy rebounds in SMA and economic recovery progresses

Published January 10th, 2021

Unlike other municipalities where the hotel sector has gone bankrupt due to the pandemic, new hotels have opened in San Miguel de Allende, said Daniel Velázquez, president of the local Chamber of Hoteliers.

“We did well in occupancy from the last 10 days of December; I still don’t have the final data, but I can say that in the first days of the holiday period we were at 70 percent and the two weekends of Christmas and New Year’s, we will surely be between 95 and 100 percent occupancy,” revealed the hotelier.

He shared that there were many visitors in San Miguel, which speaks of a recovery “we noticed in the last 4 months of 2021 with good tourist activity. We still have a good stretch to reach the numbers we had in 2019, but I believe we are on a good road to recovery”.

Daniel Velázquez revealed that surely in 2022 it will be a little complicated due to the increase of Covid infections during January and February, “but we hope to resume the activity with more normality in the rest of the year”. He assured that they are currently following all the health protocols since they resumed activities in July 2020.

“All our collaborators are complying with the basic prevention measures, such as the use of masks, masks in some cases, we are sanitizing the rooms, the common areas, the use of gel and we are being very cautious with our collaborators to whom we ask that if they feel any symptom they better stay at home”.

The leader of the hoteliers in San Miguel de Allende pointed out that this month there will be a reduction in tourism due to the Omicron variant.

He said that contrary to what is happening in Leon, where hotels that could not survive the pandemic are being sold off, in San Miguel de Allende “people are very confident in how the place is positioned in terms of tourism and unlike Leon, new hotels are opening here. In the last month at least three hotels have opened: Hotel MX, Hotel Amate and Cantera 1910”.

Finally, regarding the disappearance of the San Miguel de Allende Tourism Council, Velázquez confessed that he voted for its disappearance and to look for a way, together with the municipality, “to generate a new entity or organisms so that they can work according to new ideas and budgets to promote the city,” he concluded.