According to Tourism Minister Miguel Torruco, from January to November 2022, 18.4 million foreign visitors would come in Mexico via air, which is 8.4% higher than in 2019.
Torruco also revealed that the United States, Canada, and Colombia sent the most international visitors to Mexico, totaling 13.9 million visitors. These figures show a 43.6% increase over 2021.
More than 14 million of the visitors that entered Mexico by air came at the airports serving Mexico’s biggest tourist destinations: Cancun International Airport, Mexico City International Airport, and Los Cabos International Airport.
Torruco’s declaration, however, did not reveal the entire tale. While international travelers arriving by air in 2022 outnumbered those in 2021 by 51.7%, the total number of international tourists entering Mexico by air, sea, and land has yet to reach pre-pandemic levels, because tourists arriving by land or sea are not included in the statistics he released.
According to the national statistics department, INEGI, 58 million international tourists entered the country between January and November 2022, a figure that is still much below the 88 million visits Mexico recorded in 2019 before to the epidemic.
However, the country has maintained a good trend in the tourism industry’s recovery and is one of just a few nations that have welcomed more foreign tourists than those registered in 2021.
While the total number of international tourists has not yet reached pre-pandemic levels, the inflow of tourist money did exceed pre-pandemic levels, according to INEGI figures for January through November: revenue for the period was US $23.4 billion, an increase of US $3.3 billion from before the pandemic.
The financial rebound occurs sooner than anticipated: estimates predicted that a full recovery in tourist expenditure would not occur until the end of 2024.
According to El Financiero, the increase in foreign tourist expenditures has been boosted by two important factors: tourists have been spending more over the course of lengthier journeys, and transport has been more expensive.
Similarly, the average expenditure of overseas passengers climbed by 38.5% from January to November compared to 2019. Those figures also outperformed the data collected from January to November of 2021 by 23%.
Finally, overseas tourists spent $2.4 billion in November 2022 alone, surpassing the $2.1 billion spent in the same month in 2021 and much beyond the $857 million spent in November 2020.
In its yearly comparison, the country saw a 16.9% gain in foreign currency intake from overseas passengers, bolstering a critical industry for the Mexican economy’s recovery.
Francisco Madrid, head of the Anáhuac University’s Tourist Research and Competitiveness Center (Cicatur), told El Financiero that the growth in tourism income also demonstrates the importance of the aviation industry, which has done well over the last year.
The UNWTO predicts a “strong year” for the tourism industry globally, “despite nevertheless confronting many obstacles, including as the economic situation and the continued geopolitical uncertainties,” according to UNWTO Secretary General Zurab Pololikashvili in the report.
