Puerto Peñasco: Next Stop For Huge Cruiseliners?

By Ivan Bravo LopezIssue #449
There is a possibility that a harbor to accommodate large tourist cruises will be built in Puerto Peñasco, said the Federal Tourism Secretary Rodolfo Elizondo Torres, during a work tour he had on Tuesday 20 of November in this harbor.

After performing the official ceremony to inaugurate the SARE offices, the Tourism and Bussiness Center at the City Hall, in an interview for this newspaper, the Tourism Secretary mentioned that several conversations had been held with the Governor of Sonora Eduardo Bours Castelo to study the possibility to bring to this market large tourist cruise ships.

"We are thinking about the possibility to develop a harbor for cruisers, this is what we have been discussing with Governor Eduardo Bours, it is only an idea, so in simple terms we have to study it, see what possibilities are there, personally it seems to me a good option and we must follow the procedures to see if it is really convenient, to see how large an investment is necessary, what markets we must take into our aims", said Rodolfo Elizondo Torres, Tourism Secretary.
He also added that implementing casinos in Puerto Peñasco is viable, but nowadays it depends more than ever on the Mexican Congress to obtain authorization for their operations. He also recognized that is not necessary to install casinos to attract more tourism, since Puerto Peñasco has already on its way as a tourist development and the casinos will be only one more choice to offer to national and foreign tourist developers.

"In Mexico we already have the lottery, bingos, horse racing, and other types of gambling, I believe it should be formalized to exist a law which clearly states the legal framework for this issue. Casinos are not always the detonator for a tourism development, the development of Puerto Peñasco has already 'blasted off' and it will be only another option for tourists", he said.
On its own, Elizondo Torres pointed that the expansion of the checkpoint at the Sonoyta border with Lukeville will 'favour without a shadow of a doubt' the tourism in Puerto Peñasco, since tourists will avoid 4 or 5 hours of waiting in line to enter our country. "We need to invest more on the need of a transformation to get a more smooth flow and not to wait for things to be more complicated as they are now, is a project which does not depend exclusively on the Federal Government and the Federal government, because it s a bi-lateral project", said Elizondo Torres.
Finally, the Secretary of Tourism said that the creation of the international airport will be an extra boost for the economy, since it will allow entry in a more active market, and not only the frontier market, but it will give a different kind of growth to Puerto Peñasco.