México forecasts tourism income of $35.185 billion in 2022

Tourism will bring in $35.185 billion in revenues to México in 2022 and serving to bolster that forecast is the fact that there has already been a substantial increase in flight bookings for the coming year, the Tourism Secretariat announced.

“With information from the Official Airline Guide, the federal government’s secretary of tourism, Miguel Torruco Marques, said that booked seats on aircraft flying to México in to the coming year have increased by 22.5% over the figure for 2019,” before the pandemic, the ministry said in a statement.

Torruco said that between January and December of next year, 190,513 flights have already been scheduled to travel to México, representing a 2.1% increase over the number of flights in 2019, when 186,500 arrived.

Regarding the numbers of seats, 31.56 million have been booked so far, compared to 24.46 million passengers transported to México in 2019, a 22.5% increase.

“For 2022, from these results, it is estimated that there will be a (revenue) flow of $35.185 billion,” the tourism chief said.

Torruco said that flight scheduling for December 2021 and January 2022 is for 34,381 flights to México, compared with 34,677 flights during December 2019-January 2020, a reduction of 0.9%.

México’s tourism GDP, which before the coronavirus health crisis represented 8.7 percent of the country’s overall GDP in 2019, will finish out 2021 at 7.1% in 2021 and is forecast to finish 2022 at 8.3%, according to government estimates.

Despite the tourism GDP decline, México was the third most-visited country in the world by foreign tourists in 2020, a phenomenon attributed to the flexible health measures and protocols in the country’s tourist zones.

México in 2019 consolidated itself as one of the world’s 10 most-visited nations with more than 45 million international tourists, who spent $24.563 billion, an annual growth of 9 percent.