As many readers of ‘The Tides’ know El Gitano calls ‘em likes I sees ‘em and in my professional marketing opinion our business community continues to do a miserable job, just in our region, promoting (aka: marketing/advertising) Peñasco as a preferred travel destination.
Take Hawaii for example. Did you know that the Hawaii Tourism Authority recently reported a total expenditure by visitors to Hawaii this January reached $1.345 billion, their best one-month total on record”? In case you missed that little factoid that is money (over 1 Billion USD) spent by tourists in just one month (Jan/2012).
‘Billions’ (dollars or pesos) is a hard number to wrap one’s mind around. But as an illustration if the visiting population of Spring-Breakers to Peñasco this March was around 40,000 people then the ‘kiddies’ would have to spend nearly $34,000 (USD) each to equal the total (cumulative) tourist expenditures Hawaii raked in less than 70 days ago?
Of course we are nowhere near ‘tourist’ receivables even approaching $1 Billion per month. And although I’m confident it will be many moons (if ever) before we even come close to that amount of monthly revenue the truth of the matter is the ‘Captains’ of industry (and the ‘gov’) here aren’t doing much of anything substantial to market Peñasco.
And a huge part of the problem is due to a handful of greedy, small and narrow minded business owners and public officials who fill ‘their’ coffers and milk the gravy train from events already set in motion each year such as Spring Break, Biker Week, etc.
Then, like El Gitano used to do after making a killing selling trinkets off the back of my Vardo (which was always followed by a Siesta under a tree waiting on the next unsuspecting passersby) these swine w/their bellies full won’t spend one centavo more to promote Peñasco to a much broader and more affluent market (aka: ‘travelers’) which reminds me of some lyrics in Pink Floyd’s jingle “Money”.
In particular: "Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash" | "I'm alright, Jack, keep your hands off my stack" and lastly, in terms of investing the capital required to promote Peñasco which in turn, over time, would add more to their bank accounts their acceptance of that proven strategy is ultimately: "Don't give me that do goody bullshit"!
That said, in all fairness I do understand the mentality that once they make ‘bank’ why bother. But what is beyond my wildest imagination is if they’re in it for the money anyway, and they are, why then do they settle for crumbs and pads of cheap low-grade margarine when they are surrounded by a convoy of Mack trucks hauling loads filled with baked loaves of warm and delicious mouth watering bread and real butter!
A Gypsy can always dream!
¡Viva Puerto Peñasco y México!
Gypsy
elgitanopenasco@gmail.com
