Britannia ruled the pool. Look at the sunburn on the woman on the right. Ouch.
Newly arrived Brit tourists get a briefing from their tour operator.
Why would a Brit, living so close to the Mediterranean, fly all the way to Puerto Vallarta on the west coast of Mexico?
I don’t get it.
Why not the Caribbean? Why not Florida?
This was a burning question during my recent trip to Puerto Vallarta. (The other was whether it was possible to make the ‘beverages’ any weaker than they were.)
Started when I heard the accents. My parents are Brits. I know the accents well enough to know that some of these folks were from northern England as well as the south.
As luck would have it, I met Desmond, a Londoner who’d travelled to PV with his buddy. I put the question to him. Why fly for more than 11 hours here when there are lots of hot, sunny places closer to home.
“It’s great. We came on the Dreamliner,” he said. “We’re staying for two weeks.”
Now, this was my tenth time to PV and I’d nary heard an English accent before. Why here and why now, I asked Desmond.
Seems a popular tour company in the UK, Thomson, aka First Choice, has dumped some of its flights to Greece in favour of western Mexico. The draw for Desmond? The chance to see a new part of the world.
But wait, there was more.
Seems the price was right too. Rode with an American couple back to the airport on departure day. They’d been conducting their own research. Apparently, Thomson was offering incredible deals, about $1100.00 CDN dollars (roughly 600 GBP) for one week. Slightly cheaper than what I paid flying from Vancouver.
I get it. Thomson and some of the hotels had probably done a deal, during low season, to attract first time visitors to PV. And God knows they need a new source of tourists. This part of Mexico has been hurt by economic problems in the US, fears about drug cartel violence and frankly, the fact that the beaches on the Caribbean side are nicer.
An interesting lesson in the way tours are offered and priced in different parts of the world.
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