“Everyone thought it would take a lot longer, at least a year,” said Ana Lucia Funes, an official for the promotion of events for the Honduras Institute of Tourism, “But tourism is back and we are continuing to grow. It was about six months later that we began to see tourism come back.”

Ms. Funes says the Tourism Board had organized an array of press and family trips to the country since the unrest began last year, to show the industry that everything was back to normal.

And it worked.

“We knew the best way was to have people come and see it for themselves,” she said, “Because you never can tell what’s really going on by watching the news. So, we had media and agents and operators tour the country, and they all agreed that Honduras was as safe as it’s ever been.”