Mexico City, Mexico — According to the Mexican Ministry of Tourism, the government is striving to complete a number of significant tourism projects in 2023. Miguel Torruco Marqués, the Secretary of Tourist for the Mexican government, revealed that a number of big tourism promotion projects are scheduled for 2023 in various regions of the nation.
This year, according to Torruco, the Mar de Cortés Aquarium will open in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, establishing itself as the largest in Latin America. Along with the already launched Callejón de los Beatles and other Pacific tourist attractions, it will open.
Modernization and development of airports such as the one in Creel, Chihuahua are also on the list.
In 2021, Mexico reinforced its position as the second most visited nation in the world, moving from seventeenth to ninth in foreign exchange and from forty-first to twenty-ninth in per capita spending.
He also mentioned the opening of the Maya Train at the end of the year, which, according to him, is the country’s greatest tourism initiative in the past six decades. According to him, the Maya Train will explode tourism in southern Mexico, erasing years of stagnation in this region. Through the states of Yucatán, Quintana Roo, Campeche, Tabasco, and Chiapas, the train will comprise of 1,524 kilometers of track, 20 stops, and 190 tourist sites of significant effect.
Torruco Marqués explained that, similar to this initiative, the Secretariat under his supervision is working on the development of anchor items in the several states of the country in an effort to diversify tourism activities and increase visitor spending per capita.
Other anchor products will be added to projects inaugurated in other states, such as the Museum of Mexican Hospitality in Orizaba, Veracruz, the Armando Manzanero Museum in Mérida, Yucatán, the GNP Seguros Arena, site of the Mexican Tennis Open, in Acapulco, Guerrero, and Chinatown (La Chinesca) in Mexicali, Baja California.
Barrancas del Cobre Airport is planned to begin operations this year in Creel, Chihuahua, while work is underway on the expansion and refurbishment of the airports in Tepic, Nayarit from Tamuin, San Luis Potosi, Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, and the building of the Tulum Airport in Quintana Roo.
Other strategic projects on the list include the highway that will connect Oaxaca with the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the Mexico-Toluca Interurban Train, and the project that will facilitate connectivity between the Felipe ngeles International Airport and the center of Mexico City, including the expansion of the Suburban Train.
Torruco Marqués asserted that despite the criticism, large tourism projects will catapult Mexico to global prominence, reiterating that since the recovery of the sector following the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021, Mexico has been temporarily ranked second in international tourist arrivals, behind only France.
However, it also ranked ninth in foreign exchange revenues from tourism and 29th in per capita expenditure, up from 17th and 40th, respectively, at the start of the administration.
