Become a Travel Agent
Luxury Travel, Hurricane John and Punta de Mita
 A Lesson Learned
By: Tom Ogg

We first found the little village of Sayulita, Mexico about ten years ago while my son and I were on a NACTA cruise seminar. We had brought our surfboards with us on the cruise because I knew where the surf spots were in Cabo and Mazatlan, but didn’t really have much information about the surf in Puerto Vallarta. When we debarked the ship, we negotiated with a taxi driver to take us to a surf spot that he knew of named Sayulita. We drove the 40 kilometers, or so until we ended up on a wonderful beach in a picturesque little fishing village that just also happened to have great surf. We met some of the locals who were not yet tainted by visiting surfers and they hinted of excellent surf to the south and north in the state of Nayarit. The following summer, we rented a house in Sayulita for six weeks and explored all of Nayarit and found world-class surf spots with no surfers on them. The state of Nayarit has been our vacation choice ever since.

In fact, our family has invested in a couple of condo units in a little fishing village known as El Anclote on Punta de Mita, the northern most point of Banderas Bay in Nayarit. We chose El Anclote because of its access to some of the best surf spots in Mexico. Unfortunately, at the time there was only a dirt trail to Sayulita from Punta de Mita and the road from Puerto Vallarta was narrow and dangerous from Nayarit until one entered Jalisco, but once you were at El Anclote, little else mattered. While the road to Punta de Mita was paved, there was no pavement once you arrived. There is no super market either or much of anything else most Americans would find necessary. But, the surfing and fishing was world-class and the people were genuine.

We watched as Sayulita went from a sleepy little fishing village to a thriving beach community with tourist boutiques, tourist restaurants and tourist surf shops, lessons and camps. A few years ago Sayulita was named as one of the world’s ten best beaches by one of the leading travel magazines. For us it was time to move on, as its popularity had ruined the very essence of the charm of the village.

Today, Punta de Mita has been slated for major development as a luxury destination. The Four Seasons Hotel is already open and is considered by many as the most exclusive Four Seasons property in the chain. The St. Regis Hotel is due to open in 2007 and the master plan calls for at least two more ultra-luxury hotels and golf courses to open by 2008. There are private home developments that extend from Los Veneros on Banderas Bay to just south of Sayulita that cost in the range of 2 to 10 million dollars per property (and up). There is now a 4-lane highway from Sayulita to Punta de Mita and the road from the main highway from Puerto Vallarta to Punta de Mita is scheduled to become an easy access 4-lane highway bypassing all of the villages between the main highway in Jalisco. El Anclote itself has been scheduled for development into a sophisticated restaurant/shopping/commercial community to serve those with expensive tastes and budgets. It is all very exciting.

Fast forward to last week. Joanie and I were staying in our condo in El Anclote. She was working and I was surfing (August and September are the best months for surfing in Mexico) when we caught wind of hurricane John that was working its way up the coast of Mexico. It had pounded Acapulco and was heading our way. Joanie’s computer became the weather central station for all of El Anclote, because she was able to use the El Dorado Restaurant’s wi-fi signal to get online to monitor the hurricane using the Mexican government’s site for up-to-the-minute information. The entire community was under threat of the hurricane and took many precautionary measures. This is when I became conscious of what luxury clients really want.

On the day before the hurricane was to visit Punta de Mita the fisherman were pulling their pangas out of the water and storing them wherever they would be safe. As a member of the community, I spent the afternoon helping wherever I could. I was in front of the El Coral Restaurant pulling pangas from the water and pushing them far up into the vegetation when I looked around to see that it was primarily (what appeared to be) tourists helping. I was shocked. We pulled 6 pangas from the water and pushed them to safety and then retired to the restaurant for a cold Corona.

Sharing the common experience in the preparation for the hurricane and having been exposed to some of the personalities in the process, we started discussing our respective interests in Punta de Mita. The common bond was that each one of us had the same fascination with the beauty and uniqueness of the area and its people. It also turned out that most of the guys were very wealthy. Their wealth didn’t matter, but what did count were their experiences and the acceptance (at a very basic level) of them as individuals into a community. They were just regular folks like you and I.

Look, selling luxury travel has to do with your client’s experience and not much else. If you can offer your luxury clients specific information on how they can enjoy themselves in an environment of community, they will be very satisfied with you as their agent. Don’t think that a luxury client is any different than you are, as they are not. They want value and community when they vacation and that is the secret of marketing to luxury clients. Specific product, destination, activity and community knowledge is everything to a successful luxury agent.

By the way, if you have a following of luxury clients, you have got to see what is going on in Punta de Mita. It will definitely become the premier luxury destination in Mexico, maybe anywhere.

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