What is happening with the tourist promotion of Mexico?
In recent months we have seen that an increasing number of tourist destinations are removing restrictions on non-essential travel and reopening their borders to tourists in the interest of the long-awaited normalization of travel and tourism.
According to a report by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), as of June 2022, a total of 54 countries had no restrictions on the arrival of visitors, that is, 24% of all countries in the world. The countries that still maintained full restrictions with Covid-19 represented only 1% of all destinations in the world; 15% of destinations had only some restrictions, 66% had no measures at all, and for 16% no data was available.
As a result of the above, and in a race to recover the volume of visitors they had before the pandemic, many destinations have launched aggressive promotion strategies, which will clearly represent strong competition for Mexico and its main tourist destinations.
Among the countries that have launched new promotional actions is the United States -our main source market-, whose Department of Commerce revealed last month the National Travel and Tourism Strategy, which aims to promote international tourism by establishing goals to receive to a total of 90 million international visitors starting this year and ending in 2027.
This is just an example; but reading here and there, I learn that seven Latin American countries recently launched their own tourism promotion campaigns. These countries are: Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Ecuador, Puerto Rico, and Cuba, with campaigns aimed at the main world source markets, promoting sun and beach, gastronomy, nature, and culture.
Given this, I can’t help but wonder: What about Mexico? What is happening with the promotion of the country brand? Until now I have not seen a concrete campaign.
Moreover, at this point, I find out that the federal Ministry of Tourism has terminated the contract with Visit Mexico, the international promotion platform that was launched in 2020, with an office in New York City, and with the which was intended to promote the reactivation and recovery of tourism.
The Ministry of tourism should not be overconfident, nor be satisfied with celebrating its second place in the world tourism ranking, things can turn around, and we need to make sure we stay in that position.
What do you think?
