Oaxaca’s Guelaguetza Festival a Tourism Bust
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 07.24.07 | 12:32 PM ET
The tourism woes continue in Oaxaca, Mexico. The annual Guelaguetza folk festival usually draws more tourists than any other event in the southern city, but this year’s celebration, held Monday, was apparently a tourism bust. Hotels often fill, but this year occupancy was at only about 38 percent, according to the Los Angeles Times. “A year ago, protests forced the cancellation of Guelaguetza,” the Times reports. “This month, a new round of violent demonstrations over the rule of Oaxaca state Gov. Ulises Ruiz led to hundreds of cancellations and delivered a ‘death blow’ to the tourist industry, local business groups said.” The low tourist numbers recall Oaxaca’s Day of the Dead festivities last fall. That celebration is usually a big hit with visitors, too, but as we noted, last year, the place was, uh, dead.
Photo by stevecadman via Flickr, (Creative Commons).
Email to friend
Twitter
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Mixx
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Yahoo! Buzz
Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
