International tourism in Mexico marks a 198.5% inter-annual increase in May

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Mexico received 198.5% more international tourists in May than in the same month of 2020, when there was confinement in a good part of the world due to the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi) informed this Friday.

Mexico went from receiving 890,642 foreign tourists in May 2020 to almost 2.66 million last May. However, if the figure is compared to the 3.46 million in the fifth month of 2019, there is still a substantial drop of almost 23.2%.

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“In May 2021, 2.7 million international tourists entered Mexico, a flow that compares with 891,000 in May 2020 (+198.5%) and with 3.4 million in May 2019 (-23.2%). By air, 1.2 million entered in May 2021, 36,000 in May 2020, and 1.5 million in May 2019,” Inegi president Julio A. Santaella said on Twitter.

The main upturn was in tourists arriving by air, which in May last year represented just 36,210 people and in the same month of 2021 were more than 1.22 million travelers, a figure multiplied by more than 32.

Border tourists rose 54.1% year-on-year in May to 1.15 million travelers.

The data is in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, a disease that has so far caused more than 2.5 million infections and almost 235,000 deaths in Mexico, one of the most affected countries in the world.

In May 2021, foreign currency inflows soared by 931.5% year-on-year from US$154.3 million to US$1,591.7 million in total spending. However, when comparing last May’s figure with that of the same month in 2019, the drop is still 17.9 %.

Average spending per tourist rose year-on-year from US$61.1 in May 2020 to US$181.7 in the fifth month of this year, up 197.3%. Significantly, average tourist spending in 2021 is even higher by nearly 67% versus 2019 data, when it was US$108.95.

On June 1, 2020, the so-called “new normality” began in Mexico with a phased and very cautious economic and social opening after two months of a health emergency that paralyzed non-essential activities.

The Mexican tourism industry, which contributes 8.7% of gross domestic product (GDP), will not fully recover until 2023, according to estimates by Miguel Torruco, Secretary of Tourism.

Even so, Mexico was the third most visited country in the world in 2020, according to estimates by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), a conjunctural phenomenon attributed to flexible sanitary measures in the country’s tourist areas.

Mexico consolidated its position in 2019 as one of the 10 most visited countries globally with more than 45 million international tourists, who spent $24,563 million, a growth of 9% annually.