Quintana Roo, one of the Mexican states, has become in recent years the epicenter of online travel agencies ever since they have established their central offices there.
Booking, Expedia, Hotelbeds, Bestday, and Pricetravel have settled in Quintana Roo and made the province the main hub of online agencies on the Latin-American continent.
Julian Balbuena's Bestday was the pioneer company in situating itself in Cancún that is today the point of reference for more technological tourist companies. The most recent tourist company to settle there was Esteban Velazquez's Price Travel.
Foreign OTAs has been opening their representative offices for the entire region in Cancún, the largest city in Quintana Roo. This was the case of Booking or Expedia, as well as Hotelbeds, headquartered in Miami.
"We have to be where the tourists are," explained Pablo Castro, the head of Expedia in Cancún. Attracting talent in this hub is easier in Cancún than in Mexico City, revealed another source.
"The executives of Google or airlines go from Mexico City to Cancún every two weeks, so there's no drawback to not being in the capital, since Cancún has the advantages of faster public transportation and attention," said another source, who says that he travels twice a month to Mexico City, and that their clients are also following them there.
The same trend has been seen in the European city of Mallorca which, instead of Madrid, is the hub for several Spanish travel companies like Tui Travel A&D, Logitravel, the Barceló Group and Globalia, as well as hotel companies like Melia, Riu, Iberostar and Grupo Piñero.