Baja California

Tourism is showing signs of recovering in Baja California

Campaign to be launched to help boost visitors across the border

Baja California plans a media campaign in California to help boost tourism, which has been hurt by drug-related violence in Mexico, and it will target Latinos, the Mexican state's top tourism official said in San Diego on Monday.

"We're going to be more present in California to put this message across that we are in a very good situation, that tourists are welcome," Baja California State Secretary of Tourism Juan Tintos Funcke said.

"We are also looking very much at the Hispanic market," said Tintos. "Today, the Hispanic market is of great importance to Baja California.

In the past, they have not been considered as they should have been, in my opinion."

Tintos said the state has commissioned a Los Angeles-area consultant to conduct a survey in Southern California asking people about their perceptions of Baja California. The information will be used to develop a media campaign, he said.

Tintos said tourism is showing signs of recovering in Baja California.

"We like to think that the situation has stabilized. We even noticed small increases but they are nothing really to organize a party about," he said, adding that health-related tourism is doing particularly well in Baja California.

He was in San Diego at the Mexican Consulate to help promote AgroBaja, an agricultural, livestock and fishery exhibition scheduled for March 3-5 in Mexicali, and was asked about the impact the drug violence in Mexico was having on tourism.

Gabriel Posado Gallego, president of the 10-year-old AgroBaja program, said security concerns have not deterred business people from visiting the state to find opportunities.

"AgroBaja grew regardless of these obstacles. We grew because we are oriented toward the business sector and the business tourist.

The business tourist is also concerned with security, of course, but is also concerned about how to grow his business."

More than 34,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico in the four years since Mexican President Felipe Calderon declared war on drug cartels, including a record 15,273 last year, up from 9,616 in 2009, according to recent news media reports.

The violence has escalated as drug cartels continue to fight against each other for control of smuggling corridors in Mexico.

Tintos pointed out that much of the violence last year was concentrated outside of Baja California.

"Tijuana, specifically, and Baja California have overcome the situation that other states on the eastern part of the northern border are going through. The situation has become much better," he said.

Half of the last year's 34,612 drug-related deaths in Mexico happened in the border states of Chihuahua, Sinaloa and Tamaulipas.

Despite the secretary's optimism, deadly violence continues in parts of Tijuana, particularly the eastern side. A total of 822 people were killed last year in Tijuana, the second-highest number in the city's history. The most recorded were in 844 in 2008.

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