A tourism development model: the case of Mexico

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to reveal the need of modifying the actual operating patterns of the Mexican tourism model. Even though what has been done in the last decades must be duly appraised, in the same measure, some of the past goals have lost their application in the present context, while other actions, including some of those which support the actual tourism model, deserve to be reinforced and in some cases even be considered to become priority lines in the near future. Also, the most outstanding results reported by tourism activity will be presented in the present thesis, confirming its relevance concerning national development, and the critical aspects which limit its growth, through a retrospective analysis involving the main variations during the last decade. In the same manner, tourism development of one of Latin America’s most farsighted countries shall be put in perspective: Costa Rica. Finally, two possible quality scenarios will be developed, each one of which would respond to one of both of the possible tourism models Mexico could take up in the future. These settings will represent two both antagonistic and excluding hypotheses. In this way, priority steps will be set up for this new millennium, through which an effort should be made in order to build the basis that will allow Mexico to advance in developing a world class tourism.