Baja California Sur has granted its Distintivo de Turismo Comunitario (Community Tourism Badge) to seven businesses, projects, and individuals working to build tourism experiences rooted in local culture and heritage. Governor Víctor Manuel Castro Cosío and Maribel Collins, head of the state’s Secretaría de Turismo y Economía (SETUE, the tourism and economy ministry), presented the awards during the Second Cabrito Festival. The recipients range from a community museum in Guerrero Negro to artisan food producers and cultural promoters, and all seven will now be listed in Mexico’s National Guide of Community Tourism Experiences.
59 Registered Experiences Across Baja California Sur
The badge program is part of a broader state effort to develop tourism options outside the Los Cabos resort corridor. Collins said BCS now has 59 registered community tourism experiences spanning cultural, gastronomic, and natural heritage categories. Each registered experience becomes eligible for inclusion in the federal government’s national guide, a directory that promotes community tourism to domestic and international travelers.
The concept behind community tourism, known in Mexico as turismo comunitario, is straightforward: local residents design and operate the experience, and the economic benefit stays in the community. Mexico’s federal tourism ministry has pushed the model since 2019 as a way to distribute visitor spending beyond large resort destinations. BCS, where tourism accounts for a significant share of the state economy but concentrates heavily in Los Cabos and La Paz, is a natural candidate for the approach.
The seven 2025 recipients are Mar de Amores, The Californias, Productos El Patrocinio, the MUSAM Community Museum in Guerrero Negro, Kadakaamanga, Guillermo Ignacio Arce Ojeda, and Karla Verónica Georgina Reyes Dávila.
MUSAM in Guerrero Negro and Kadakaamanga Offer Distinct Experiences
Two of the recipients stand out as accessible examples of what community tourism looks like on the ground in BCS. The MUSAM (Museo Comunitario de Santa Rosalía de Mulegé, though located in Guerrero Negro) is a community museum that preserves and displays the cultural heritage of the Vizcaíno Desert region. Guerrero Negro, a small town on the Pacific coast roughly 450 miles north of Cabo San Lucas, is best known as the launching point for gray whale watching in Ojo de Liebre Lagoon. The lagoon draws thousands of visitors each winter between January and March. MUSAM gives those travelers a reason to stay longer by offering exhibits on the region’s salt mining history, pre-Hispanic cave paintings, and the ecology of the Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1993.
Kadakaamanga, another recipient, takes its name from the Guaycura language once spoken by indigenous groups in the southern cape region. The project focuses on recovering and sharing indigenous cultural knowledge from the Baja California peninsula, a history that predates the Jesuit missions of the 17th and 18th centuries. For visitors accustomed to the resort experience in Los Cabos, Kadakaamanga represents a different kind of encounter with the peninsula’s deep past.
Productos El Patrocinio, also among the awardees, is a food production project. Artisan food is a growing segment of BCS community tourism. The Cabrito Festival itself, where the awards were presented, celebrates the region’s ranching tradition of slow-roasting young goat, a dish with roots in the missionary and ranching culture of the peninsula’s interior.
National Guide Listing Opens Federal Promotion Channels
The practical effect of the badge for these seven projects is visibility. Inclusion in Mexico’s National Guide of Community Tourism Experiences places them on a platform promoted by the federal Secretaría de Turismo (SECTUR, the national tourism ministry). The guide is designed to connect travelers, both Mexican and foreign, with vetted local experiences. For small operations in remote towns like Guerrero Negro, that kind of exposure is difficult to achieve independently.
Collins said the state will continue to promote all 59 registered experiences as part of a sustainable tourism model. The 59 figure represents a notable inventory for a state with a population of roughly 800,000, suggesting that community tourism projects are distributed across multiple municipalities, not just the population centers of La Paz and Los Cabos.
The Second Cabrito Festival, which served as the backdrop for the ceremony, itself fits the community tourism model. Regional food festivals have become a vehicle for interior BCS towns to attract visitors during periods outside the peak whale watching and sport fishing seasons.
The next round of badge applications has not been announced, but Collins said the state government will continue supporting projects that advance community-based tourism across BCS. This story was first reported by the Baja California Sur state government press office.