Monday, June 23, 2025

Best-case scenario for tourism this year is 26% fewer visitors than 2019

International tourist numbers will increase 33.7% in 2021 compared to last year in a best-case scenario, according to the federal Tourism Ministry (Sectur), but even if that upturn is achieved tourism would still be well below 2019 levels.

According to Sectur’s most optimistic projection, 33.1 million international tourists will come to Mexico this year, 8.3 million more than in 2020 when tourism slumped due to the coronavirus pandemic.

However, 33.1 million visitors would be 26% lower than the record 45 million international tourists who traveled to Mexico in 2019.

In a “conservative” scenario, 30.4 million international tourists will visit Mexico this year, Sectur said in a statement Monday, while in a “pessimistic” scenario the figure will be 25.2 million.

The figure for the latter would represent a 1.5% increase compared to 2020 but a 44% decline compared to 2019.

Sectur said that whether an optimistic, conservative or pessimistic scenario unfolds will depend on the evolution of the coronavirus pandemic around the world as well as progress in the application of Covid-19 vaccines, “which has already begun in our country and the main markets for tourists to Mexico.”

Spending by international tourists while in Mexico is predicted to be US $16 billion in 2021 in the best scenario, which would be an increase of 42% or $4.7 billion compared to 2020. However, that level of expenditure would represent a decrease of abut 35% compared to 2019 when international tourists spent $24.8 billion here.

In a conservative scenario, international tourists will spend $14.4 billion in 2021 while in a pessimistic one the outlay will be $11.5 billion, Sectur said.

The Tourism Ministry predicted that average hotel occupancy across 70 Mexican destinations will be 56.6% in 2021 in an optimistic scenario.

That would be 4.7% lower than the average in 2019. In a conservative scenario, average occupancy will be 50.9%, 10.4% lower than in 2019, Sectur said, while in a pessimistic scenario hotels will be 46.1% full, a decline of 15.2%.

Mexico News Daily 

Have something to say? Paid Subscribers get all access to make & read comments.
Poverty rate in Mexico

Report: Mexico’s poverty reduction policies outperform all 37 OECD member countries

0
Government policies in Mexico helped reduce relative poverty by 3.9 percentage points from 2012 through 2021, whereas other member nations only saw poverty decline by one point in the same period.
Sheinbaum on Iran

Sheinbaum: ‘Mexico will always be a factor for peace’ after US-Iran escalation

1
President Claudia Sheinbaum on Sunday expressed opposition to war and called on the United Nations to lead a peacebuilding process after the United States military attacked three nuclear facilities in Iran.
An AI robot hand reaches out to touch a human hand

How do we make sure that AI doesn’t make us dumber? A perspective from our CEO

17
AI can make us smarter or it can make us lazier. CEO Travis Bembenek shares how Mexico News Daily is working to offer readers the good kind of AI.