This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Lora Pope, 36, a content creator and blogger, originally from Canada, who hosts three Airbnbs in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Pope was away during the violence in Jalisco, but was still in contact with her guests. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Puerto Vallarta is my home base.
I went there for the first time in 2021 while I was a full-time digital nomad. In 2023, I bought an apartment in Puerto Vallarta and obtained residency, but I still travel for about 6 months of the year.
I own a one-bedroom condo that I rent out when I’m traveling, but I also have some long-term properties that I rent and then sublease on Airbnb — it’s called Airbnb arbitrage. You rent them, then sublease them with the owner’s permission.
I manage the Airbnb accounts and handle all guest messaging; everything falls under my purview. I just pay rent to the landlord every month. I started that in May 2025.
I was actually in Mexico City during the recent violence, so I wasn’t there during the event. Still, all my places are booked out right now.
I tried my best to give my guests all the information I had
When I woke up Sunday morning, I had a ton of messages from my friends in Puerto Vallarta showing videos of the explosions. I wasn’t too sure what was happening because there was a lot of information coming quite rapidly.
I waited a few hours to gather more information about what was happening. I was already receiving some messages from guests.
One of them was obviously alarmed. I reached out to the other two just to make sure that they were OK.
At that point, there were a lot of rumors running around, and people were saying, “Don’t go outside. They’re threatening civilians.” I don’t even think that was an official thing, but just to be safe, I told my guests, “Please stay inside.”
A lot of people were asking me, “What is your opinion? What do you think? What should we do?”
I think the thing people were most concerned about was food, because, obviously, people are on vacation, and they hadn’t stocked up the kitchen, knowing that was going to happen.
I have filtered water in all of my apartments, so I knew they had water, but I was mainly concerned about whether they had to stay inside for days, and if they could get by.
Luckily, all of them had enough food for that day. And by Monday, things had already calmed down a lot, and the grocery stores opened up, so they were able to get food.
I’ve thought more about natural disasters because we have had earthquakes or bad hurricanes in the past, but I’ve never thought about something like this because Puerto Vallarta has historically been one of the safest places in Mexico.
I was sharing any official information I had from the municipality, trying to help my guests stay as calm as possible, and just letting them know I was there. And if they needed anything, I would do my best to get it. It was a pretty stressful situation.
Whenever I travel, I always have someone in Puerto Vallarta as my backup — like an emergency contact. And she offered to do what she could to help.
I’ve already had a few cancellations, but I’m hoping this doesn’t crush the long-term tourism economy
My properties are very much in affected areas. As far as I know, I haven’t had any reports of damage to my properties. Everything has been good. I’ve been in constant contact with my neighbors. I don’t think the intention was to harm civilians.
The guests that I currently have have not talked about leaving early. The first day, I think there were a lot of flights being canceled, so it was quite difficult to leave early.
Now, it seems like flights are resuming. My guest in Cinco actually reached out Monday, saying they were worried about their flight being canceled and asking if the apartment was available to stay longer if needed.
I have had a few cancellations for future bookings, though.
I had one guest, who was supposed to check in on Wednesday at the Zona Romántica apartment, reach out on Monday to ask me for my opinion on the situation and whether it was safe to travel there.
At the time, there was still a lot of uncertainty about whether it would get better. She ended up canceling on Tuesday. Airbnb has, because it’s considered a major disruptive event, waived the cancellation policy. So even if my cancellation policy says you must cancel within five days, Airbnb will waive the cancellation for them, given the circumstances.
So far, I’ve had three future cancellations — I would assume that those are due to the event.
I really hope this doesn’t affect business down the line. I do think it’s definitely going to have an immediate effect. I just know people can get really spooked, and there’s already a lot of fearmongering that happens about Mexico. So I do think this is going to impact people’s perceptions and maybe make them feel less safe coming here, which is really unfortunate.
From what I’ve heard, Puerto Vallarta is already returning to normal — not that I’m minimizing what happened on Monday. As I said, Puerto Vallarta has always been one of the safest places in Mexico to live or visit. But I am definitely concerned about the immediate impact on the rest of the high season.
These properties are pretty important — they make up at least half my income. I am trying not to panic too much about the situation right now because it’s so recent.
I don’t think it’ll get to the point where I can’t cover my rent, but it’s definitely a scary thought, how much this is going to impact tourism.
For next year, I hope that, over the course of the year, as people see things are fine and visitors to Puerto Vallarta are having a good time, it’ll fade from their memories, and we’ll come back stronger.
It’s always been a really popular tourist destination, so I think in the long term it’ll be OK.
An Airbnb spokesperson told Business Insider in a statement, “We are monitoring this situation carefully and are focused on supporting guests and hosts in impacted areas. We have implemented our Major Disruptive Events Policy in the entirety of Jalisco, as well as other impacted regions, providing cancellation and refund support. We encourage any members of our community who need assistance to reach out to our 24/7 support team.”
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