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Tourism Still Boosting the Baja Economy

New marinas and peninsula-crossing roads are designed with U.S. visitors in mind

In 1916, Tijuana's city fathers looked north of the border, saw the crowds attracted to San Diego's Panama-California Exposition and seized the opportunity. They held their own feria, drawing visitors to a display of Mexican music, dancing and a bazaar filled with colorful arts and crafts from around Mexico. Ever since, Tijuana — Mexico's gateway into Baja California — has succeeded in parlaying proximity to the United States into a vibrant, constantly adapting tourist industry.

Tourism continues to be a major source of employment and revenue. Recreational tourism in Baja generated $1.1 billion in revenue last year, a $200,000 increase over 2005. That figure does not include money spent by visitors on health care, a sector that is expected to grow as more Americans seek lower cost health care and medications or retire south of the border. More than $3 billion was spent on medical care in Baja California in 2006, says a recent study by the Mexican company Imerk.

Still, Baja tourism officials aren't resting on their laurels. There is room for growth, says Alejandro Moreno Medina, Baja California’s secretary of tourism.

Moreno and other Baja tourism representatives came to San Diego last month to unveil a tourist outreach campaign featuring a new Tijuana mascot, Xuani Tijuani, and a cadre of volunteers offering information in the major tourist areas.

But this is hardly the only initiative in Baja, where $2.2 billion in tourist infrastructure projects are under construction.

For instance, Moreno says that road known as the land bridge has been built across the narrow mid-section of Baja California, providing a land shortcut so that boats can be hauled in a few hours between the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Cortez. Currently, a boater sailing down the coast of the 800-mile-long Baja California peninsula has to round its southern tip to reach the Sea of Cortez.

Work is under way, the secretary says, on marinas at each end of the land bridge. On the Pacific side, the new marina in the town of Santa Rosaliita is due for completion later this year and the one at Bahia de los Angeles on the Sea of Cortez will be finished in early 2008. Another new marina has been completed in San Felipe.

It's not the marinas that are interesting, he says. Those are just parking lots for boats. What's interesting to us is that the people going there will need a place to stay and eat. They will need to buy things, and this will generate business.

Another road project will widen the existing highway from the popular east Baja coastal town of San Felipe north toward the U.S. border. For 13 miles from San Felipe, the two-lane highway will be expanded to four lanes, from south to north. And on the drawing board is a plan to build another link connecting the west and east sides of Baja. That new road would extend nearly 75 miles from Puertecitos on the Sea of Cortez to the Trans-Peninsula Highway near Lake Chapala and the town of Cataviña. The project could get under way as early as next year, Moreno says.

Some Baja tourism programs are designed to draw more Baja Californians into finding employment in the tourist industry. For instance, small no-interest loans are offered so that people can start their own tourism businesses, such as becoming a tour guide or switching from commercial fishing to sport fishing.

Other projects will enhance Baja's increasingly sophisticated urban scene. Moreno notes that Tijuana's landmark cultural center in Zona Rio is being expanded. This expansion will allow them to hold international art exhibits, says Moreno.

Despite its achievements, the Baja visitor industry has had its challenges. Heightened security at the border has resulted in longer waits for those re-entering the United States, possibly discouraging some tourists from a visit. But Moreno says U.S. immigration officials plan to place more booths at the San Ysidro crossing, positioning them in tandem to speed up inspections for each line of traffic. That will be a turning point for us, says Moreno.

Even with a slight drop of annual visitors, 25 million crossed the border last year, making it the busiest in the world. I could live with 25 million visitors a year, Moreno says. We want to get away from just the four-hour visits. We want a higher quality of tourism.

Lynne Carrier