Annual tourism report.In our annual look at the nation's tourism industry, BUSINESS MEXICO focuses on the basics--the beautiful beaches that routinely fill the nation's coffers with foreign cash and the airlines that get us there. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The airline industry has undergone sweeping changes in recent months, as new CEOs have been hired to lead Aeromexico and Mexicana as their holding company, Cintra, struggles to control its fiscal bleeding. The duopoly Duopoly A situation in which two companies own all or nearly all of the market for a given type of product or service. Notes: This is very similar to a monopoly, where only one company dominates the market. , which once enjoyed competition-free skies, faces fresh challenges from U.S.-based carriers attempting to carve out to make or get by cutting, or as if by cutting; to cut out. - Shak. See also: Carve profitable niches in Mexico as the U.S. market--which is just returning to pre-9-11 passenger levels--grows increasingly cutthroat cut·throat n. 1. A murderer, especially one who cuts throats. 2. An unprincipled, ruthless person. 3. A cutthroat trout. adj. 1. Cruel; murderous. 2. . Low-cost carriers A low-cost carrier or low-cost airline (also known as a no-frills or discount carrier / airline) is an airline that offers generally low fares in exchange for eliminating many traditional passenger services. have cut into the large airlines' bottom lines, driving the top U.S. airlines beyond their traditional hubs and forcing them to explore new market options. The Mexico-U.S. business traveler has become the prime target in this new war in the skies, and airlines are adding direct flights to industrial centers beyond the "Big Three" of Mexico City Mexico City Spanish Ciudad de México City (pop., 2000: city, 8,605,239; 2003 metro. area est., 18,660,000), capital of Mexico. Located at an elevation of 7,350 ft (2,240 m), it is officially coterminous with the Federal District, which occupies 571 sq mi , Monterrey and Guadalajara in an effort to build a new customer base. Fresh new routes to beach destinations are also being offered, as top tourism spots are developed as the nation struggles to emerge from the flat economy. Tourism has long been a cornerstone of the nation's foreign income, but environmentalists say the Fox administration has taken the business-first perspective to a new level, selling out the nation's world-class beaches and nature reserves for a quick buck. Golf courses on previously untouched mangrove mangrove, large tropical evergreen tree, genus Rhizophora, that grows on muddy tidal flats and along protected ocean shorelines. Mangroves are most abundant in tropical Asia, Africa, and the islands of the SW Pacific. swamps and cruise-ship ports on virgin stretches of Maya coastline are just a pair of concerns. This so-called sustainable development Sustainable development is a socio-ecological process characterized by the fulfilment of human needs while maintaining the quality of the natural environment indefinitely. The linkage between environment and development was globally recognized in 1980, when the International Union is an oxymoron of the first level, critics say, as developers only wish to sustain their own profit-making resorts. We invite our readers to delve deeper into these themes in the pages that follow. |
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