September was a good month for tourism in Mexico, according to new data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) — but it wasn’t quite as good as September 2019, a few months before the COVID pandemic was declared.

In September of this year, Mexico received 2.77 million international tourists, which was a 12.9% increase compared to the same month in 2021, according to INEGI’s International Traveler Survey. However, that number was 8.8 percent lower than the arrivals for September 2019, back when masks were something worn primarily for Halloween and costume parties.

Moreover, the number for September 2022 was a few ticks lower than the 3.1 million international tourists who visited during August 2022, when summer vacationing with the kids was still in high gear.

The survey noted that while many foreign visitors are day-trippers to border towns or cruise ship passengers, there were 1.63 million tourists in September 2022 who stayed over at least one night in the interior of Mexico — a 27.1% increase over September 2019.

Of course, tourists spend money: a total of US $1.8 billion in September 2022, which was better than the US $1.5 billion spent in September 2021 and the US $600 million spent in September 2020, according to INEGI.

The survey also presented average expenditures by each tourist who arrived by air: US $1,057 in September 2022, compared to US $1,123 in September 2021 and US $957 in September 2020.

Overall, for the first nine months of 2022, it was reported that 27.5 million international tourists entered the country, an increase of 22.4% over the same period in 2021 — but still not as many as the 32.8 million for the same period in 2019.

The cumulative January-through-September spending figures for 2022 were US $19.3 billion, which beat last year’s total by 56% and even surpassed the US $16.9 billion spent during the same period of 2019, according to INEGI data, although higher 2022 prices due to inflation have had an impact.

With reports from La Jornada and the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI)