Only 2% of the 135 hotels in the city are open due to the health contingency
San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato.- SMA , a colonial city that has won awards for being “The Most Beautiful”, “The Best to Visit” and which last year received more than 50 thousand visitors at Easter, today is empty.
Its garden, where visitors sit to contemplate the immensity of the parish of San Miguel de Arcángel and listen to the music of the mariachi that never stops, today is guarded with security tapes to prevent the benches from being used and walking around its kiosk. Everyone should be separated and protected at home from the coronavirus pandemic.
The city that lives on tourism today suffers from its absence because without them you don’t earn from selling, there is no one who buys crafts or who wants a mariachi song.
Restrict hours to restaurants
Of the 300 restaurants that exist in the San Miguel de Allende registry, some decided to close “until further notice” and those who still operate must keep the “healthy distance” between their diners to avoid contagions by COVID-19.
At 9 pm there should be no more customers and the taco stands, those who served the late-night after visiting the bars and canteens should go home early because no one can sell after the indicated time.
Today more patrols and traffic elements are seen on the streets than civilians. The corners are relentlessly watched by those who must keep order and ask those who walk to go home because it is a “government measure”.
Few walkers are in the streets, where there is much to see but little to do.
Jorge Olalde, president of the Association of Hoteliers of San Miguel de Allende, says that last year, in the 135 hotels that are there to receive tourism, 9 out of 10 rooms were filled; Today only 2% is open, awaiting the arrival of someone who dares to challenge the pandemic and travel to a city paralyzed by the pandemic.
There are no tram trips around the attractive places, there are no mojigangas waiting for you to take your photos. The vendors of colored balloons have no one to sell to, and the craft stores and brass stars better closed because they have a harder time keeping a place open that no one will visit.
‘The losses are terrible’
Since March 20, the day the Government of San Miguel de Allende launched the emergency call to close bars, canteens, restaurants, and hotels, this Heritage City began to run out of people.
Elaine Pérez, director of the Escondido Place conceptual park and member of the Board of Directors of the Atotonilco area, says that recreational parks, spas, and hot springs decided to lower the curtain from the first day of the emergency.
The losses as companies are terrible. 795 are affected in the Atotonilco corridor of 15 hotels, 12 spas and 14 restaurants. No one is working and we are all enduring this crisis, supporting the employees, but we don’t know how long we are going to endure. ”
This Sunday marks 24 days of confinement and voluntary closure, where San Miguel de Allende so far registers three positive cases of the coronavirus and the first community contagion that was registered in Guanajuato. The state added, until last Friday, five deaths from COVID-19 and 88 confirmed cases.
Source: notimextv, am.com.mx
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