Though the major resort destinations on Mexico’s Pacific
coast dodged a bullet on Oct. 23, a well-oiled response team was ready, no
matter what blew their way.
Hurricane Patricia came barreling out of the Pacific late on
Oct. 22, growing from a Category 1 to a Category 5 storm in less than 24 hours,
with the National Hurricane Center (NHC) predicting it was headed directly for
Puerto Vallarta and Riviera Nayarit.
Folks were scared, but Mexico’s national emergency system,
which includes the central government and local officials in combination with
tour operators, travel agents, airlines and NHC forecasters, worked in harmony
to coordinate, communicate, evacuate and update as landfall drew near.
The back story to the response efforts involved hundreds of
people working to safeguard tourists and locals, protect property and maintain
order. It was a coordinated response that arose from years of experience with
natural disasters and their aftermath.
“We all worked together,” said Jack Richards, president and
CEO of Pleasant Holidays. “We caught a break with this storm, but we were
dealing with a horrific scenario in the hours leading up to landfall. From
Rodolfo Lopez Negrete [CEO of the Mexico Tourist Board] on down, communications
were excellent, the best in years.”
The logistics of moving large numbers of tourists in the
Vallarta Nayarit region that day out of harm’s way were staggering. Some
reports put the number as high as 15,000; Tim Mullen, president of Apple
Vacations, said Apple Leisure Group alone had 2,200 guests to evacuate.
“We have an Emergency Plan and an Emergency Committee in
place for outlying events,” Mullen said. “We update the team and its procedures
annually. The team jumps into place as critical events develop. We hold
periodic meetings during the events and hold post-event meetings and tweak
procedures.”
The plan and the team worked like clockwork that day. After
the first pre-check meeting, Apple’s emergency plan for Puerto Vallarta
switched into action simultaneously at the headquarters of Apple Vacations,
Travel Impressions, Cheap Caribbean, AMResorts and Amstar, the destination
management company.
Certain committee members were pre-assigned to communicate
with clients, travel agents and vendors. Amstar contacted clients by calling
their hotel rooms or speaking with them when they stopped by the resorts’
hospitality desks.
“As a standard practice, our personnel gathered the latest
information on schedules from airlines, shelter locations and evacuation
procedures as well as airport/infrastructure status from government officials,”
Mullen said.
Internal websites were constantly updated with information
on airline- and hotel-change policies.
Agent portal sites such as Apple’s Travel Agent Cafe and The
Juice, the company’s corporate blog, were updated with the same information,
“so we could maintain a consistent message across all media,” Mullen said.
Similar action plans played out across Classic Vacations and
Pleasant Holidays.
Federico Moreno-Nickerson, Classic Vacations’ director of
product development for the Caribbean and Mexico, said, “the Mexican government
has a detailed plan to deal with natural disasters, which are a common
occurrence there. Mexico is no stranger to earthquakes or hurricanes and
everything that comes with them.”
In the case of Hurricane
Patricia, “the national utility company had 1,000 workers ready to move into
impacted areas,” Moreno-Nickerson said. “Local governments and municipalities
have checklists and evacuation plans for shelters, and each hotel knows where
its designated shelter is.”
Shelters are most often situated in schools, convention
centers, classroom buildings on university campuses and in interior ballrooms
of hotels, away from windows.
“And everyone knows in advance where they are supposed to
go,” Moreno-Nickerson said.
Classic had 40 clients in Puerto Vallarta when the crisis
began building and few dozen slated to arrive later on that day.
“We were constantly monitoring NHC’s hurricane forecasts,”
he said. “When the storm moved to a hurricane-watch level, our teams got to
work. It was all hands on deck. One team worked with our ground operator to
determine evacuation options. The second team contacted clients and travel
agents to advise them about storm conditions.”
Classic’s motto in situations such as hurricanes is to “be
proactive,” he said. “The biggest preparations take place leading up to the
storm. By the time the storm arrives, most of the legwork has been done.”
Some guests were able to fly out before the airport in
Puerto Vallarta closed at noon.
“After that,” Moreno-Nickerson said, “guests were told they
could be bused to Guadalajara fours hours away and stay in a hotel there that
we had booked for them and fly out the next day, or they could ride out the
storm in Puerto Vallarta in a safe, designated off-site shelter that had been
approved by the civil authorities.”
By late afternoon, as the storm clouds gathered, downtown
Puerto Vallarta was all but deserted, and buses full of travelers bound for
Guadalajara encountered massive traffic backups.
Still, Classic got all its clients evacuated or into
shelters well before Friday evening when Hurricane Patricia was due to make
landfall.
Pleasant Holidays’ well-rehearsed contingency plan had its
crisis team in place and ready to go when the NHC weather maps plotted a
probable path of destruction headed for Vallarta Nayarit.
“We contacted the travel agents to get customers’ cell phone
numbers, which we sent to each hotel and to our ground operator, who served as
the eyes and ears for us there,” Richards said.
The crisis team members contacted the 54 Pleasant customers
who were in the possible eye of the storm as well as family members back home
to keep them apprised of the situation.
Pleasant posted alerts and updates on its website and gave
customers the option of a bus to Guadalajara or to the shelter at the
convention center.
Patricia was packing 165 mph winds, when it made landfall at
6:30 p.m. on Oct. 23, but fortunately, it hit a sparsely populated section of
the coast between Puerto Vallarta and Manzanillo. Many guests who had been
evacuated from coastal hotels were able to return that same night.
The storm broke apart quickly over the coastal mountains,
diminished in wind speed and left minimal damage where it made landfall, none
in resort areas.
The sun came out the next day, the airport and cruise port
reopened, and it was business as usual.
“We got lucky with this one,” Richards said. Yet there was a
sense that even had the storm made a direct hit on tourist areas, the impact on
travelers would have been minimal.
“There was a good plan in place,” Richards said. “The
ability to communicate continuously was key.”