by Mia Taylor
Last updated: 5:15 PM ET, Wed September 30, 2026
Mexico has set is sights on attracting more tourists to Puerto Vallarta with an expanded cruise homeport.
The Governor of Jalisco, Pablo Lemus, revealed on social media that the city was chosen for the expanded port over popular competitors like Mazatlan, Los Cabos and Nayarit.
Lemus told the Mexican newspaper El Informador that the decision to invest in Puerto Vallarta's infrastructure was aimed at helping the city address a drop in visitors. The governor attributed the visitation decline to the isolated cartel incident that took place February. He also suggested the exchange rate has contributed to the problem.
Gang violence in the Mexican state of Jalisco, where Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara are located, in retaliation for the Mexican military’s killing of a major cartel leader, led to shelter-in-place warnings by the U.S. Embassy in Mexico in February.
In response, officials in the Cancun, Playa del Carmen, Tulum, and Riviera Maya areas increased police presence as a precaution. There were no airport closures, transportation shutdowns, or interruptions to tourism services as a result of the gang violence.
The incident, however, caused a great deal of misinformation and inaccurate information about what took place to circulate online.
The new cruise homeport project would allow Puerto Vallarta to increase the number of visitors to the city and people staying before or after they take these cruise ships, said Luis Villasenor, director of the Puerto Vallarta Tourism Board, added. "There are a lot of good things happening in the destination that help us to motivate travelers to come."
Currently, Puerto Vallarta has a port with three berths, which are primarily used by premium and contemporary cruise lines.
Construction on the new homeport is expected to get underway in 2027. However, no cruise lines have revealed plans to homeport in Puerto Vallarta as of yet.
Local officials say the additional capacity would create opportunities for cruises that reach farther south or permit more time along the Mexican Coast.
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