Bernardo Aguilar, the new president of the Asociación de Hoteles de Jalisco (Jalisco Hotel Association), has confirmed that eight hotels will open this year in Guadalajara. And another eight are planned next year, plus four more in 2026, he added.
The new metro-area hotels will be located mostly in the city center, by the Expo Guadalajara events center, near the airport, in the Providencia neighborhood, and along Avenida Lopez Mateos, the city’s busiest thoroughfare.
Aguilar said the new hotels will add 2,700 rooms to the metropolitan area’s current total of 28,500.
At a recent handover ceremony, outgoing Hotel Association President Juan Carlos Mondragón said the hotel boom is an indicator of how positively the local economy has rebounded since the end of the Covid pandemic in 2022. Last year, Guadalajara welcomed around 17 million visitors of all nationalities, a 13.5-percent increase on 2022. Hotel occupancy in 2023 was 62 percent, he noted, and the average hotel room cost 1,528 pesos (US$85).
Aguilar predicted “exciting times” ahead for the tourism sector in Guadalajara and the rest of Jalisco, noting that the key infrastructure improvements at the Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara airports are almost complete. The opening of a second runway at the Guadalajara airport and a second terminal in Puerto Vallarta – both scheduled for later this year – will allow the airports to increase their passenger traffic capacity, he said.
The anticipated opening of the new Costalagre Airport will be a detonator for tourism expansion along the southern Jalisco coastline, he added.