330 women, three sports, and a 4.79 million peso promise arrive in Tulum

A women's football, volleyball, and yoga tournament expected to draw 395 visitors will open in Tulum on October 2, the first product of a national sports tourism strategy presented Wednesday.

The three-day event takes place at the Domo Doble of the Unidad Deportiva and in other public spaces throughout the municipality. Movimiento Euforia by Arrecifes organizes the event in collaboration with the Consejo Mexicano de Turismo Deportivo, the state tourism ministry, and the Tulum government. Quintana Roo tourism secretary Bernardo Cueto Riestra headed the presentation at the Hotel Mundo Maya.

Hoteliers will read the date first. Quintana Roo's tourism information system put Tulum occupancy at 45 percent for the week of September 5 to 11, and David Ortiz Mena, president of the Asociación de Hoteles de Tulum, said this month that his beach members were running under 20 percent with no turn expected before October. Euforia Freedom Tulum lands in the first week of that month, with a minimum stay of four nights written into the organizers' own projection.

Three sports and one domed court

The tournament is open to clubs, academies and women's sports institutions from across the country, with children's, youth and open categories in football and volleyball. Yoga runs beside them as the third discipline, without brackets or standings.

Organizers expect 100 athletes from Tulum, 230 from other states, and 165 companions. One version of the announcement listed the field at over 350 athletes. The breakdown attached to the economic estimate lists 330 competitors, and that number forms the basis of the estimate.

Only the 395 people arriving from outside sleep in a hotel. The local half of the field goes home each night.

A women-only tournament, and the reason organizers give

José Luis Sosa Limón, national president of the Consejo Mexicano de Turismo Deportivo, described the women's framing as the event's stated differentiator.

Our differentiator in this event is that it is generated through a pro-woman movement, a movement where women today are looking for these spaces free of violence.

He was speaking in Spanish, and the wording above is a translation.

Laura Villordo López, president of Movimiento Euforia, made the same argument in terms of health, saying sport also works as a tool to strengthen women's right to health and to build safe spaces for their development.

395 visitors, four nights, 4.79 million pesos

The organizers estimate a direct economic impact of 1.8 million pesos and an indirect impact of 2.98 million pesos, for a total they round to 4.79 million pesos. The two components add to 4.78. The spending they count covers lodging, food and drink, transport, souvenirs, and entry to attractions.

Divide the direct figure among the 230 visiting athletes and their 165 companions, across four nights each, and it comes to roughly 1,140 pesos per person per night for a room, meals and moving around town. That points at hotels in the town rather than the beach road.

One tournament of this size does not move a season. What it does produce is a figure that can be checked in October, which is more than most tourism announcements in Tulum leave behind.

Sosa wants a Tulum sports tourism catalog for international fairs

The tournament is the opening move of something larger. Sosa said the strategy responds to an instruction from Mexico's federal tourism ministry and begins with sports service providers already operating in Tulum, who would then be integrated into the tourism value chain. Good providers exist, he said, and the work now is to join them with everything else a visiting club needs.

From there, the plan calls for a catalog of sports tourism products to be shown at international fairs and expos, packaged with lodging, transportation, and tourist activities, so that a visiting club buys a trip rather than a tournament entry. Sosa said the goal is for Tulum to have something to sell in that segment every month of the year, coordinated among the federal, state, and municipal governments and private operators.

Cueto placed the effort inside Tulum Renace, the state project that groups tourism, culture, sport, wellbeing and sustainable development.

Tulum has everything it needs to keep growing as an integral tourism destination.

Haydée Hernández Pastrana, the municipality's general director of tourism, attended for Mayor Diego Castañón Trejo and said that sport can also be a way of traveling, meeting people, and getting to know what the Pueblo Mágico has to offer. The organizers describe this first edition as the platform they intend to build on, with subsequent events aligned with the same strategy.

Nobody at the presentation gave a date for the catalog or named the fairs where it would be shown. The first figures anyone can check arrive after October 4, when the visitors go home, and the hotels count what a women's tournament actually left in town.

Can sports tourism fill Tulum's hotels in the months when the beach cannot? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.