Belize City Looks to Tap Into Tourism Potential from Chetumal

Darrell Bradley

With established relations between the municipalities of Belize City, San Pedro and Chetumal, Bradley says that the idea is for Belize to tap into the tourist population across the northern border, while also being able to market Belizean products in Mexico. When the Mexican Mayor visits in the early part of next year, Bradley says a meeting will be set up with the local Chamber of Commerce.

Darrell Bradley, Belize City Mayor

“A lot of people go to Chetumal and they take it for granted in terms of the substantive relationship that we have. You go there, you go to Cancun and you don’t need a visa…all of those things work through these sister city arrangements and through diplomatic channels through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belize and Othon P. Blanco, Quintana Roo and then also of Mexico. So there is a lot of areas of cooperation. The border cards for example. This is a huge issue in terms of the buses, the taxis, the border transactions. So it’s a significant area; a lot of it is discussions between ministries in the central government and ministries in the state of Quintana Roo, but the municipality also has a significant role to play in terms of having a voice. Another thing that we want to dialogue with is when the mayor comes in January, to have a delegation of Belize’s Chamber of Commerce meet with him. One of the things that we always here when we have these sister city relationships is that we would have people coming in, but we want to also promote export and promote Belizean businesses going into Quintana Roo and develop that way. One of the things that we were talking about, at least at the municipality level, is how you can get Belizean product at least shouldered through this Belize City office in Quintana Roo so that there is this promotional brand in Mexico. I think one of the shortcomings of Belize—and I know we’ve done a tremendous amount of work in terms of promoting tourism—but we tend to look to the United States and Canada and we forget that Mexico is a population of one hundred and twenty million people. And lower Mexico has forty million people. So even if one percent of that population comes to Belize for tourism or has some sort of exchange, that is a significant amount of people. and these sister city relationships both with Chetumal and then also with Guatemala promotes those kind of fixtures because these are our closest neighbors and it would be a shame for us not to have meaningful exchanges with them that yields very tangible and economic social benefits for our Belizean people.”