Los Cabos Launching New Digital Tourist Service Directory To Keep Visitors Safe

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Last Updated 1 year ago

Over the last few weeks, there has been some controversy brewing over “fake” transport services. Particularly being offered to tourists from the Cabo airport out to the different hotels or vacation homes in the region.

Authorities claimed to have knowledge of at least 300 separate companies that were operating outside the law.

Apart from looking to regulate companies that offer services to tourists, local authorities have come up with the idea of creating a tourist service directory.

This will, in a sense, act as a catalog that tourists can go to in search of the services that they may need around Cabo.

Since the directory is going to be run by the municipal tourism desk, all of the businesses that appear within that catalog will be operating within the law. At least, that’s the hope. 

Local Authorities Are Hoping Businesses Comply To Get The Project Off The Ground 

Currently, the head of the tourism desk in the Los Cabos government, Dona Jeffries, is making a plea to local businesses to sign onto the idea.

She mentioned in a recent press conference that business owners would have to send an email with a specific format to the official government email account.

That’s meant to be the first step towards getting their business promoted on the official Los Cabos tourism directory. 

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Once it’s fully up and running, the directory is going to be accessible through a tab on the official Los Cabos tourism website run by the local government.

Currently, the site provides details for upcoming cultural events in Los Cabos. Also, it keeps visitors up to date with the different efforts that are being made by the government to promote Los Cabos.

Truth be told, though, as things stand, the information offered on the site doesn’t provide too many solutions for tourists.     

The hope is that this new directory can be seen as a free promotional tool for local businesses.

That could be the incentive to get them to sign up.

At the moment, businesses are only being asked to provide the name of their business, a short description of what they do, and general contact information. Businesses have until June 20th to sign up. At which time the service directory will begin being built.

Authorities May Accomplish Multiple Goals Building This Directory

There are two main things that authorities may be looking to accomplish in building this directory. The first and obvious goal is to build something that’s truly going to be able to help travelers enhance their stay.

Although there are a ton of websites that sell tours and different experiences to travelers that come to Cabo or even different destinations, at times, these sites don’t take the time to verify that the company they’re promoting is actually legitimate.

With the government backing this new initiative, the hope is that travelers will be able to trust that the companies listed on the directory are legitimate. If that’s not the case, then they’ll at least have a better argument to take their case up with the local authorities if something goes wrong.

The second goal that authorities are looking to achieve in creating this directory is precisely spotting those fake companies.

It may actually be a good idea not to require companies to offer any form of legal registration in this first sign-up process to create the directory.

Ultimately these companies are going to be leaving their direct contact information with authorities, and this can help them create a list of people who are operating as tourist service providers in the region. The next step may be to go down these lists and check who is actually operating legally.   

As we previously discussed, authorities claim that there are at least 300 companies posing as tourist transport operators without the necessary documentation to do so.

Creating a directory could help authorities spot those companies.

As far as we know, the inclusion in this new directory is voluntary. It could be up and running as early as August of this year since the registration books will be closed by the end of June.