Puerto Vallarta's Irregular Awarding of Its Digital Strategy Contract Ramon Lopez and Daniel Gomez - Mijo! Brands
June 19, 2014

PUERTO VALLARTA - In 4 years, Mijo! Brands has participated in 5 creative and competitive pitches to develop the digital or advertising strategy for Puerto Vallarta. Recently we've began to note a gradual erosion of transparency, procedural safeguards and standards in relation to the way competing agencies and their proposals are evaluated and contracts awarded.

When we first pitched and were awarded our first of 2 contracts with the CVB in April 2010, we endured three months of intense and methodical scrutiny during which the Conventions and Visitors Bureau (CVB), headed then by Dennis Whitelaw from the Hotel CasaMagna Marriott Puerto Vallarta, reviewed not only the proposed strategies and designs but also our company experience, our educational and professional references, case studies, our team's technical ability, our organizational structure and even our financial stability before signing the contract.

We were exhaustedly interviewed by various committees including experts drawn from the various hotels and sub-committees that made up the CVB. We faced challenging administrative hurdles that required us to incorporate our company and provide a $300,000 MXN bond.

Despite the challenges and through the lens of hindsight, we now understand that the intense and intimidating scrutiny was nothing more than standard due diligence that public organizations theoretically undertake before awarding vender contracts.

Recently, the global economic recession, Mexico's image as a narco-nation and the AH1N1 flu has required destinations around the world to tighten promotional budgets, demand value added and more carefully scrutinize their venders to ensure an optimal return on investment in campaigns.

We suspect that this was not the case this past June 4th, 2014 when the Puerto Vallarta Tourism Trust's Technical Committee renewed its incumbent agency's contract for another 12 months for a reported $3,000,000 MXN. We suspect that had this year's competing agencies and their proposals been subjected to the same rigorous screening we faced 4 years earlier, the results of the public tender might have been different. We're not implying that we should have won the bid, however much we would have liked, rather it would have meant that the incumbent agency would have had a lot of difficult explaining to do.

The undeniable fact is that current agency's track record with the destination's two websites and social media strategy is flawed. Since taking over the project, the agency has succeed in singe-handedly eliminating a 2.5 year effort involving 5 agencies and hundreds of people with a nearly $2 million pesos price tag that succeeded in positioning Puerto Vallarta against its competitors in Mexico and abroad.

The facts that should have been discovered and questioned during any semblance of due diligence by Puerto Vallarta Tourism Trust's Technical Committee include:

The combined number of unique visitors to the city's 2 portals (www.visitpuertovallarta.com and www.visitapuertovallarta.com.mx) has dropped by more than 30% in less than 15 months. Its first place position on Google for the Puerto Vallarta and other natural search terms has and continues to drop. The number of unique visit since the website's new design was revealed little more than 2 weeks ago has resulted in an 34% increase in the bounce rate and a 27% decrease in visitor numbers equalling 4,532 lost visits to the site, that doesn't include the 208,864 visitors to the site we lost in 2103/14 when compared to 2012/13.

How can we be sure? Google Analytics and a cursory review of the site make it impossible to miss any one of its shortcomings:

More than 3,000 blogs, news articles and events along with popular sections covering beaches, safety and how to get here, a weekly cinema guide and 5 downloadable brochures in English, Spanish and French and a comprehensive LGBT section and interactive Google maps were eliminated without explanation or protest from the Technical Committee overseeing the project.

The services directory in the site that featured over 900 businesses that actively registered was whittled down to 5 categories from a previous 27, erasing popular directories like art galleries, real estate and vacation club resorts. What perhaps deserved the most explanation was the suspension of the off-line mobile application, especially since 40% of visits to the city's 2 websites are via a mobile phone or tablet device.

Puerto Vallarta's social media has also suffered over the past year. The very month all the agencies were invited to participate in the public bidding process, Puerto Vallarta's Facebook fan page showed a spectacular increase in “likes” during the months of April and May (approximately 100,000 in 30 days and of that 20,000 new likes in a single day) which on closer scrutiny suggests that the incumbent agency bought likes with the hopes of influencing the competition's results. The strategy seems to have worked, despite the fact that Facebook can shut down a page if it deems it´s engaging in spam.

On Twitter, followers were achieved by offering to follow back, which is a strategy that dilutes the influence and credibility of any Twitter that engages in it. Other social networks, like YouTube and Google+ have been virtually abandoned.

Despite this, OOH Marketing Digital, the agency responsible, was awarded the contract without apparent review of it's poor performance or questionable practices and without any explanation as to the way the proposals or experience of the competing agencies were assessed.

We at Mijo! Brands were informed of our unsuccessful bid to promote the city on June 5th, 2014, nearly 24 hours after the winner had been informed and first published their success across their social networks.

On June 10th, 2014 after consulting with the 2 other unsuccessful agencies, we formally submitted a request for a public review of the Technical Committee's decision to the Fideicomiso's legal representative and 2 of its directors. Eight days later, we have yet to receive any formal acknowledgement or response to our request which included a revocation of the contract, inline with state laws governing public bids if, as we suspect, a technical analysis was not undertaken prior to the contract being awarded. Our request has less to do with the winning agency than it does with challenging the decision taken and very clear lack of accountability that the Fideicomiso enjoys regarding the decision it made on our behalf.

What do we expect to gain from challenging the Fideicomiso de Turismo? We can hope for transparency and due diligence. If due diligence was not followed, then we will work to hold those who voted for the decision to award the contract accountable. We want to understand how such an important decision that impacts on the social and economic well being of the destination got whittled down to 4 30-minute presentations and one review meeting. Surely, the destination's digital strategy deserves more consideration and analysis by the stewards of the tourism trust.

The role of public stewards is clear, including the roles of those that make up the Fideicomiso de Turismo and it's various committees. Public stewards of public assets, like the 3% tax on accommodation which the Fideicomiso collects and administer on our behalf, must put the collective interests of those they represent ahead of personal interests or biases. Given the results in the digital agency selection process which overlooked serious flaws in the way the city's promotional website and social media have been managed over the past 15 months, little logic was employed in the selection process. A simple tour of the website or review of its Google Analytics would have given a very clear indication that the status quo could no longer be maintained. Very clearly, the Technical Committee failed in its duty.

The Google Analytics can be obtained by calling the Tourism Trust on (322) 224 1175.

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