Carlos Dragonné
Tourism journalism: The dilemma of sales vs. investigation
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Carlos Dragonné
Tourism journalism: The dilemma of sales vs. investigation
When did the need for commercial survival begin to dilute the essence of travel journalism? It is not a new question, yet the urgency of answering it becomes increasingly impossible to ignore.
Tourism journalism produced in Mexico — and in much of the world — is facing a silent transformation: that of a discipline which, at times, forgets that its primary function is to investigate, provide context, and question. The dizzying pressure of advertising revenue, the allure of trips sponsored by tourism boards, and the growing dependence on sponsored content have gradually shaped a narrative in which it is often difficult to distinguish between a sales catalog and an editorial article.
This is not about pointing fingers, but rather about asking ourselves what we have lost along the way — and what we may still recover if we choose to challenge instead of applaud.
The commercialization of destinations: Business or journalism?
Major international tourism forums — the Tianguis Turístico, IPW, FITUR, and others — have consolidated themselves as business platforms. They are, without question, vital spaces for the industry. But they are also the clearest reflection of a deeper problem: when a journalist attends as the guest of a convention and visitors bureau, whose interests does that journalist ultimately serve?
At the 49th edition of the Tianguis Turístico, held in Rosarito, the official figures were dazzling: 1,700 international buyers from 44 countries, 3,216 Mexican exhibitors, and a projected economic impact of 1.35 billion pesos. However, as several critical voices have pointed out, the event’s format continues to prioritize political speeches, ceremonial appearances, and the public showcasing of officials over the generation of effective business opportunities. Meanwhile, tourism journalism — specialized, experienced, and professionally trained — was, in some cases, marginalized as little more than “functional filler” or “just another decorative element in the announcement hall.”
Isn’t it paradoxical that the journalism meant to analyze the industry ends up being treated as a dispensable appendage? When did we stop asking questions, for example, about the real conditions of the destinations we promote?
Tourism promotion in Mexico: Leadership crisis and institutional vacuum
One of the least discussed, yet most revealing facts is the disappearance of the Consejo de Promoción Turística de México during the previous presidential administration. The agency was responsible not only for strengthening the country’s tourism brand, but also for activating crisis management mechanisms and strategic public relations initiatives. Its absence has left a void that private alliances with companies such as BBVA and Cinépolis are now attempting to fill, while other world-leading destinations — such as Spain, with an investment of 100 million euros, or Las Vegas, with roughly 200 million dollars — allocate robust public budgets to their international positioning strategies.
The result is a tourism promotion model subordinated to short-term political decisions and insufficient budgets, lacking a state framework capable of guaranteeing continuity and transparency. And amid this institutional orphanhood, specialized journalism struggles between the necessity of advertising revenue — which often comes from the same actors it should be investigating — and the urgent need to maintain a critical voice.
The agenda of silence: Gentrification, price abuse, and environmental impact
While travel magazines continue repeating the same watery choreography of the ten synchronized fountain jets in Las Vegas or celebrating the poetic charm of weary “luxury” hotel architecture while the streets fill with homeless people displaced by an economy of abandonment, one cannot help but wonder when traveling through Spain: where are the reports on overtourism in Madrid, which has accelerated gentrification and transformed the urban landscape to the point of erasing century-old bookstores and traditional taverns?
In Spain, the housing crisis has already become a structural problem. Housing prices increased by 47 percent between 2015 and 2023, while rental prices rose by 85 percent over the last decade, largely due to the proliferation of tourist and seasonal apartments. In Barcelona, activists stop tourist buses and spray them with water pistols under the slogan “Let’s extinguish the fire of tourism.” Thousands of residents march demanding a revision of the economic model that worsens the housing crisis and transforms their cities. Yet travelers consulting major tourism platforms rarely hear about any of this.
In Mexico, the phenomenon is no different. The Riviera Maya and Cancún, conceived as tourism destinations, are experiencing processes of gentrification and touristification that displace local populations and generate profound economic inequality. The Maya people, in particular, are witnessing how hotel expansion and megaprojects such as the Tren Maya threaten not only their territory and environment, but also their traditional ways of life. Meanwhile, criticism remains scarce. Most content simply applauds the beauty of the cenotes, the excellence of the gastronomy, and the luxury of new developments.
Where are the reports that question the economic divide created by tourism abuse? Where are the analyses on the lack of regulation surrounding temporary rentals? And where, ultimately, is the journalism willing to discomfort those with the economic and political power to change it?
The pandemic of the algorithm and the journalist’s surrender
Tourism journalism has also yielded to another silent enemy: the algorithm. The pursuit of clicks, page views, and content “that performs well” on social media has led many publications to prioritize spectacle over depth. Influencers — transformed into improvised experts — have multiplied their presence while professionally trained journalists steadily lose space. But the debate is not against them. It is against the absence of regulation and transparency.
Mexico is only beginning to regulate this industry. Legislative proposals already exist to fine influencers who engage in misleading advertising or harmful content, with penalties reaching up to 1.1 million pesos. There is also growing discussion about the need for influencers to clearly disclose paid collaborations — a basic transparency requirement that no serious media outlet should ignore. Meanwhile, the Ley Fintech already oversees electronic transactions, though without directly addressing the payment chain connecting brands, agencies, and content creators.
At the same time, the debate over the damage caused by social media algorithms has reached the courts. Meta
faces lawsuits accusing the company of deliberately designing addictive products for young users, and a court in New Mexico has ruled that the company must pay 375 million dollars for violating consumer protection laws. Demands now include forcing Meta to redesign its algorithm to prioritize quality content for minors and eliminate features such as infinite scrolling and autoplay.
Tourism journalism will remain dignified and credible only insofar as it knows how to separate information from promotion, criticism from applause, and investigation from complacent storytelling.
The urgency of journalism that challenges power
The problem is not merely commercial or editorial. At its core, it is a problem of power and systemic corruption. The same hands signing tourism promotion agreements at trade fairs and international expos are also negotiating, in parallel, with real estate developers, beach concessionaires, and foreign investment funds that view Mexico as a fiscal and regulatory paradise ripe for exploitation without accountability.
Tourism journalism has, for decades, been a comfortable transit zone. Rarely does anyone speak about irregular concessions in protected coastal areas, the displacement of Indigenous communities to build golf courses, or the ties between tourism officials and businesspeople operating through offshore tax havens. Nobody asks why certain pharaonic megaprojects receive immediate approval while environmental impact studies are quietly buried in drawers. Nobody investigates the investment funds purchasing entire hotel chains and driving prices so high that the Mexican coastline becomes inaccessible to Mexicans themselves.
Where is the journalism that places the traveler’s real consequences on the decision-making table?
Not only carbon footprints or water stress, but also the social consequences: the gentrification that forces fishermen and farmers from their lands; the inflation of basic services that turns tourist destinations into unlivable zones for local residents; the labor precarity disguised as “green jobs” in all-inclusive resorts.
The conscious traveler deserves to know that every purchasing decision — the flight they choose, the hotel where they stay, the excursion they book — has direct implications for the lives of the communities they visit. And journalism has the obligation to tell those stories, even if doing so means losing advertising revenue or confronting tourism boards that finance press trips.
A broken chain and forgotten guardians
The tourism industry feeds on a value chain that stretches from the farmer who grows the ingredients served in restaurants to the artisan weaving hammocks, from the local guide who knows the hidden trails to the woman selling empanadas on the beach. That chain, however, is broken. The primary beneficiaries of the tourism boom are always the same: hotel conglomerates, airlines, international tour operators, and, in Mexico, a handful of politically connected families.
Meanwhile, the guardians of tradition and authentic stories — Indigenous communities, coastal fishermen, chinampa farmers, and textile artisans — are abandoned to their fate. Their knowledge is appropriated and repackaged as “authentic experiences” sold by agencies, yet their voices never appear in contracts or feasibility studies. Journalism worthy of the name must ask where the truly meaningful projects are: those that generate shared prosperity, those that transcend influencer photographs and design awards.
The uncomfortable question nobody asks
At every edition of the Tianguis Turístico, in every press conference held by Mexico’s tourism authorities, and at every tourism promotion campaign launch, there is one question that nobody asks: who truly benefits from this tourism model? The communities that inhabit these destinations, or a political and business elite that has turned tourism into a profitable, opaque, and increasingly unsustainable enterprise for the few?
As long as tourism journalism refuses to investigate dangerous alliances, ties to economic power, and decisions that benefit a privileged minority at the expense of the majority, it will continue to function as a silent accomplice to devastation — not only ecological, but also social and cultural.
What is being lost is not an economic activity, but an entire identity
Camera flashes, Instagram likes, lists of “must-visit” restaurants, and articles celebrating every new hotel development all come at a cost. That cost is not paid in dollars or pesos; it is paid through the loss of identity, the disappearance of languages and traditions, the homogenization of landscapes, and the displacement of those who have cared for these lands for generations.
Tourism journalism owes a historical debt to those silent guardians. It can continue applauding the arrival of another Michelin star in the Riviera Maya, or it can begin asking why fishermen in Puerto Morelos can no longer provide for their families because the sea itself appears to have been concessioned to foreigners — or worse, to criminal powers that no one dares confront.
The essence we must recover
This is not about demonizing tourism. It is about recovering the essence of journalism itself: to ask questions, to challenge, to prove. And to do so within the travel industry as well — an industry that generates more money in Mexico than remittances or oil, yet operates with a level of opacity inversely proportional to its economic importance.
It is urgent that Mexican tourism journalism — and the international press covering the country — dare to place uncomfortable subjects on the table. Journalists must interview the displaced, not only government officials. We need investigations into irregular concessions, not just reports about gastronomic routes. There must be scrutiny and denunciation of investment funds purchasing entire paradises, rather than endless magazine covers featuring the same celebrity chefs arriving at the amusement park atmosphere of the Riviera Maya.
Only then will travelers be able to make conscious decisions; only then will communities have a voice in the forums where their futures are decided. Ultimately, we can — and must — aspire for tourism to cease being an empty discourse of sustainability and instead become a genuine tool for equitable development.
Because between the flashes and the likes, what is being lost is not merely an economic activity. What is being lost, slowly yet inexorably, is an entire identity. And unlike a flight ticket or a hotel room, that identity comes with no switch fare and no refund policy.
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Author: Carlos Dragonné
Sabores de México - Sabores del Mundo
The authors are responsible for the choice and presentation of the facts contained in this document and for the opinions expressed therein, which are not necessarily those of Tourism and Society Think Tank and do not commit the Organization, and should not be attributed to TSTT or its members.
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