Thanks to a busy month in March, the total number of tourists for the first quarter of 2022 was over 800,000, a 13% increase compared to the same period of 2019. Over 300,000 tourists visited Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, in March, setting a new monthly record for visitor numbers.
The head of the local tourism trust reported that 325,000 tourists visited the twin resort towns of Cabo San Lucas and San José del Cabo last month.
“For the size … of the destination, it’s a lot. It’s the month with the largest tourist influx in the history of Los Cabos,” said Fiturca chief Rodrigo Esponda. “We had never had more than 300,000 tourists in a month.”
The Los Cabos tourism industry has depended heavily on visitors from the United States, but 97% of tourists in March were Mexicans. The influx of Mexican visitors came after tourism authorities increased promotion of the destination in the domestic market.
The record tourist numbers last month lifted the total for the first quarter of 2022 to just over 800,000, a 13% increase compared to the same period of 2019.
Tourists stayed an average of 6.7 days in Los Cabos and spent an average of US $3,000 each, a 20% increase compared to 2019. Hotel stays cost an average of $450 per night, an increase of $100 compared to pre-pandemic times.
Esponda said that hotels have limited their capacity to 75% in order to offer guests better service and an overall experience that justifies the higher daily rates.
As destinations around the world open up and lure American travelers farther afield, Fiturca will seek to attract visitors from other markets, such as Canada and Europe, to offset any reduction in arrivals from the U.S.
The tourism trust expects that some 3 million tourists will fly into the Los Cabos international airport in 2022. The airport is the sixth busiest in Mexico, according to federal government data.
A boon for the Los Cabos tourism industry is the reduction in violence in Baja California Sur, which was plagued by violent crime as recently as the second half of the last decade but is now one of the country’s safest states.
The future for the sector looks rosy, with the construction of at least nine new luxury hotels already underway or set to start soon.
With reports from ReformaÂ
