Puerto Vallarta International Convention Center.
The past year has been a challenging one for Patricia Farias Barlow, director of the Puerto Vallarta International Convention Center (ICC), as they have been going through a reorganization process with the Jalisco state government. The convention center was built in 2009 on 34 acres of the El Salado Estuary protected area, and part of their revenue actually goes toward the conservation and protection of that land. As such, the convention center’s land was hung from public works government entities and a board that didn’t have any knowledge of running a convention center.
Puerto Vallarta ICC hosts about 35 events each year, five percent of which is international business. It is the first state-owned convention center to go through this process in an industry that Barlow, a 2015 Convention Industry Council Hall of Leaders inductee, described as still fairly new for Mexico.
“Mexico lost a lot of track time because we didn’t really have formal convention centers here until they opened in the major urban areas of Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey,” said Barlow. “Even Mexico City didn’t really have a dedicated convention center until 2002 with the opening of Centro Banamex.”
Today, Mexico City has three thriving convention centers, but it is a different story for other buildings in Mexico’s smaller cities. Facilities like that in Puerto Vallarta are limited in the events they are able to attract — mostly corporate events, meetings and conventions — because of Mexico’s centralized economy. And with the cyclical model of these events, most of these conventions move locations every year. Barlow said exhibitions and consumer events are unreachable for her in Puerto Vallarta.
“Everything is in Mexico City; even the Navy is situated in Mexico City even though it’s landlocked,” said Barlow. “So what happens is, convention centers can’t thrive the same way they do in the United States because they’re completely based on the economic activity of the region. People don't get on an airplane as much as they do in the U.S. to go to an event. The event has to go to the market. So that limits some of the growth opportunities.”
Mexico went through a bit of a convention-center boom as bigger and better buildings kept being built without access to industry sources for information on what was needed. These architectural statements were not necessarily functional buildings because they never talked to the users and the industry to assess best practices.
“In my opinion right now, the growth is huge — in the last eight years they’ve built probably 30 buildings — but there’s just not enough business for everybody,” said Barlow. “If you go back to saying the events these building will have are conventions and meetings and congresses, there are only so many of those. So then governors start giving away space or shutting them down and turning them into something else. This sets us as an industry, and in the public opinion, and the community back years, because our credibility is then questioned.”
Community involvement is a major part of the growing industry, especially educating them on the purpose and benefits of convention centers and their events.
“We’re still at a point in Mexico where we’re having to push very strongly to get the people to understand what the meetings industry and trade shows and all of this is and what benefit it is,” said Barlow. “We’re 20 years behind what is happening in the United States in that sense. We’re having the same level of meetings, but we’re still having to go out into the community and say why it is that they need to support this industry.”
After going through the process to legally separate the convention center’s land from the protected area, Barlow had to rally the government so the entity that governs the Puerto Vallarta ICC would be the ministry of economy and the CVB, creating a state-formed operating company to run the convention center. Barlow is very hopeful for what the separation will allow them to do.
“It will allow us to go out and compete pricewise with other buildings and destinations in Mexico,” said Barlow. “Since we didn’t have the capacity to even invoice, we had to go through a third party and all of that, which of course eats away at your margin.” Marketing will be streamlined and best practices incorporated without having to go through the bureaucratic process that hampered operations in the past. “I foresee an exceptional amount of growth for our building.”
Barlow believes education and training, both of which she’s very involved in, needs to go along with growth. As more and more buildings are built, entire staffs are hired that require training on how to professionally operate a convention center. To help facilitate that, AMEREF (Associacion Mexicana de Recintos Feriales, A.C.), of which Barlow is part, has formed a partnership with the International Association of Venue Managers.
“Mexico’s future in this industry will depend on the amount and how quickly we can go out there and educate and prepare people for this industry,” said Barlow.
Look for more Mexico coverage in our November issue of Venues Today.
Interviewed for this story: Patricia Farias Barlow, + 52 322 225 8436