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ASIPONA seeks to turn Puerto Vallarta into a cruise home port
Puerto Vallarta could soon become more than a stop on a cruise itinerary — it could become where the cruise begins.
Federal port authority ASIPONA has been running a competition for a 17-year concession to build and operate the city’s first full cruise “home port,” a status that would let passengers fly in, stay in local hotels and board their ship here for the first time, rather than just disembarking for a few hours before it sails on. The window for companies to enter that competition has now closed, though ASIPONA has not yet said how many firms bought in or when a winner might be named.
Puerto Vallarta currently functions almost exclusively as a port of call, where ships dock for roughly eight to 12 hours while passengers disembark for shore excursions before reboarding the same vessel. A home port requires far more infrastructure than a port of call, including baggage handling, long-term parking, customs processing and airport-style check-in facilities. Establishing one in Puerto Vallarta would mark a shift in how long cruise visitors stay in the city, and could open the Mexican Pacific cruise market to Mexican travelers who currently need a U.S. visa to sail it.
Because most Mexican Riviera cruises currently depart from California ports such as Los Angeles, Long Beach or San Diego, Mexican nationals generally need a U.S. tourist visa to board them, even though the ships sail back to Mexican ports. A cruise that begins and ends in Puerto Vallarta would not carry that requirement, potentially opening the route to Mexican travelers who don’t hold a U.S. visa.
Puerto Vallarta handled 535,132 cruise passengers across 171 ship arrivals in 2025, down 2.4% from 548,146 passengers in 2024, according to Contralinea’s reporting on ASIPONA figures. Those numbers reflect the port’s current role as a port of call; a home port designation would add embarking and disembarking passengers to that count on top of existing port-of-call traffic.
ASIPONA published the bidding call — Aviso ASIPONA/PUERTOVALLARTA/TERMINALHOMEPORT/01/26 — in the Diario Oficial de la Federación, Mexico’s official gazette, on Sept. 4. It invited Mexican or foreign companies with cruise-terminal or nautical-tourism operating experience to bid on what the notice calls a “cesión parcial de derechos,” or partial rights assignment, for construction and operation of the terminal.
The winning bidder would hold the concession for 17 years, renewable for an equal additional term. The project covers 95,172.11 square meters — 38,445.22 square meters of land and 56,726.89 square meters of water — and includes three cruise ship berths for passenger embarkation and disembarkation, along with port services and commercial and entertainment development. The notice excludes casinos, betting operations, nightclubs, political or religious activity, and street vending from the permitted uses.
Bidders must show a minimum capital or net worth of 200 million pesos as of the end of 2025. The bidding documents themselves cost 950,000 pesos plus tax and were available for purchase only through Sept. 11 — meaning the window for any company to enter the competition has now closed, whatever the remaining timeline holds. The convocatoria states that the rest of the process — clarification sessions, proposal submission, and the award date — is set out in the full bases document, which has not been made public. ASIPONA has not announced any further step since that purchase deadline passed.
It was the ideal showcase where the “Puerto Vallarta Home Port” project was presented, capturing the interest of cruise lines, port operators and companies dedicated to the Cruise industry.
Among the meetings held were those with the FCCA, Carnival Corporation, Royal Caribbean International, Mediterranean Shipping Company, ITM Group, Global Ports Holding, and SSA Marine Mexico, among others. Photo provided.
At Seatrade Cruise Global, the industry’s largest annual conference, held in Miami April 13-16, ASIPONA Puerto Vallarta presented the home port project directly to prospective operators, according to a statement posted on the port authority’s website. The port authority said it held meetings with Carnival Corporation, Royal Caribbean International, MSC, ITM Group, Global Ports Holding and SSA Marine México, along with the Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association.
None of those companies has been named as a bidder on the September concession call, and ASIPONA’s statement did not specify what was discussed beyond describing the sessions as a chance “to strengthen the growth of the port system in Mexico.” Global Ports Holding — the world’s largest independent cruise port operator, with 34 terminals worldwide but no existing presence in Mexico — separately sent a delegation to tour ASIPONA’s Puerto Vallarta facilities in June 2025, and the company won a 24-year concession to operate Acapulco’s cruise port earlier this year.
Any successful bidder would also be expected to help fund expansion of the port’s piers, since ASIPONA has said it lacks the budget to do so on its own, according to Contralinea. Puerto Vallarta’s existing piers were built to handle ships up to roughly 334 to 340 meters, while a growing share of new cruise ships exceed 360 meters — a gap port officials have cited as a reason for the project.
The new terminal would be built within ASIPONA’s existing federal port footprint at piers 1, 2 and 3, not at a new location.
ASIPONA separately awarded a related contract in early May — Aviso IA-13-J2V-013J2V001-N-18-2026 — hiring an outside firm to design and run the bidding process itself, according to procurement documents posted on ASIPONA’s website. That process appears to be the administrative groundwork that produced September’s formal concession call, though ASIPONA has not stated that connection publicly. Records show the contract was awarded, but the name of the winning firm is not listed in the publicly available notice.
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