Interview with Roberto Hernández Ramírez, Chairman, Banco Nacional de Mexico; SA; Former CEO, Banamex

Interview with Roberto Hernández Ramírez, Chairman, Banco Nacional de Mexico; SA; Former CEO, Banamex

National Bank of Mexico Chairman Roberto Hernández Ramírez, former CEO of Banamex, might be most well-known for his financial and business savvy. But he’s an equally strong example of one of the most pressing concerns facing the travel and tourism industry today: how to make travel sustainable, and still profitable. 

A longtime member of The Nature Conservancy, Ramírez shared his unique insights during the opening session for Friday’s panels of the inaugural Americans Summit of the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC). He was interviewed by Geoffrey Kent, CEO of Abercrombie & Kent Group, one of the world’s leading tour operators, which specialises in high-end, sustainable travel. 

A trip the two took to the Yucatán Peninsula sparked stimulating conversation, while providing an example of one of Ramirez’s most successful conservation initiatives. “For conservation efforts, you need to raise a lot of money, and this is a big challenge,”  

Ramiréz said. “The other big challenge outside the U.S. is that the areas we want to conserve are areas where there are people living. So we have to take into account how to solve [those problems].”  

With respect to his involvement with the Nature Conservancy, Ramírez said three main sustainability areas have emerged as the main focus for the future of conservation efforts: sufficient water and food sources to maintain an exploding global population, and developing the proper infrastructure to support that growth. Acquiring land from government for preservation efforts, he noted, is especially challenging. 

“But we’re achieving that and moving forward,” he said. “It’s an educational process. It has to be consistent. We have to insist on it to the government and to local communities.”  

In order to achieve global conservation goals, education is paramount, too. “We all talk about how big our water problems will be in the future, but not much is being done,” Ramírez said. “[According to surveys], approximately 70 percent of people, when you ask where water comes from, they say it comes from the faucet.” 

Ramírez also shared an overview of one of his most impressive conservation and tourism projects, on the Yucatán Peninsula. Following the collapse of the “green gold” industry in the early 19th century, local cultures and communities foundered for the next century.  

But Ramírez, upon witnessing the decline during his subsequent visits, decided to take action.He and his wife, Claudia, restored several haciendas and turned them into small hotels that preserve the culture, while protecting the environment. Other sustainable development has followed, too. 

“In 1966 I visited the area for the first time, and at that time I fell in love with the Mesoamerican region, and that’s when I started dreaming of something,” Ramírez said. “There’s amazing biodiversity, Maya heritage and haciendas, which are almost like English country houses, that were once highly productive and then abandoned. It’s like a movie. You find all these wonders in the midst of the jungles.”