ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN A REGIONAL TOURISM SECTOR IN MEXICO (2020-2021)

In Mexico, the Magical Towns Program is a government strategy designed to stimu-late and diversify economic activities that boost local economies in 177 small touristic towns. The aim of this study is to com-pare the impact of coVID-19 confinement measures on the local economy linked to tourism in eight out of the nine Magical Towns (MTs) of Michoacan. To achieve aim, an experiment was designed with two sample groups, one of people and the other of companies from MTs'. The economic impact was measured with two indices that were compared for each sample group among the MTs using Fisher's technique known as Least Significant Differences (LSD). The results sug-gest that the population perceived a high impact (72/100), while companies perceived a regular impact (49/100). The LSD test suggests that economic impact of confinement was homogeneous in 25 contrasts, which did not show significant differences. On the other hand, there were three contrasts, with a MT as a common factor (Tzintzuntzan), in which a greater economic impact than the rest was perceived.