Unlike international tourism that recovered from the pandemic last year, travel by Mexicans in the country is lagging behind due to the pandemic and inflation, analysts explained.
Figures from the Datatur Monitoring System of the Ministry of Tourism show that the country’s hotels served 59.2 million national tourists last year.
Although it is a volume 29.6% higher than in 2021 and more than double that of 2020, the result for 2022 is 4.8% below that of 2019, which is equivalent to 3 million fewer tourists.
Experts from Grupo Empresarial Estrategia (Gemes) explain that there are several obstacles that prevented a recovery in domestic tourism, starting with the spread of a new variant of coronavirus, less lethal but more contagious, which put a brake on dynamism in the last months of 2021 and caused a sharp slowdown in the arrival of travelers in early 2022.
After a few months of recovery, in summer there was a 10.9% drop in July 2022 compared to the same period in 2019, a month that is usually the busiest.
“A complicated economic situation and above all the higher inflation, further exacerbated on tourist products and services, have also been inhibitors for national trips,” they explained in Gemes.
They highlighted that the progress in the use of temporary accommodation platforms, such as Airbnb and HomeAway, may be affecting the arrival of tourists to hotels, since there is a market segment that has shown a preference for resorting to this type of accommodation.
At the destination level, mixed results are observed in 2022, since the best part was taken by the hotels that offer sun and beach tourism, they exceeded the pre-pandemic level, while for other destinations there were deep decreases.
For example, Puerto Vallarta and Manzanillo closed 2022 with increases of 23.1% and 17.4% in the arrival of Mexicans compared to the last pre-pandemic year. Cancun and Mazatlán, which are the second and third most important beach destinations, also increased hotel arrivals in 2022 compared to 2019.
For Gemes, the recovery of domestic tourism is essential to achieve the full normality of the so-called industry without chimneys, considering its importance as a trigger for the growth of important destinations in the country.
subscribe here to receive our newsletters on daily news, opinion, and many more options directly in your email.
