Sectur promotes Mexican destinations and investment opportunities in New York
During the second day of his work tour in this city, the Secretary of Tourism held meetings with businessmen, investors, tour operators and travel agents, among others
On the second day of his work tour in New York City with “Operación Toca Puertas”, the Secretary of Tourism of Mexico, Miguel Torruco Marqués, carried out promotional actions on Mexican tourist destinations and the investment opportunities that exist. in the tourism sector in our country, when meeting with businessmen, investors, tour operators, travel agents, executives, journalists and representatives of associations in this city.
In the morning, when participating in the seminar “Así es México”, given to tour operators, travel agents and representatives of local airlines, the head of the Ministry of Tourism (Sectur) explained that the tourism industry is a key sector for the economy of our country, by contributing 8.7 percent of the Gross Domestic Product and generating 4.5 million direct jobs, which is equivalent to 8.9 percent of the total registered jobs
He indicated that in 2019, Mexico ranked seventh in the Top Ten of the World Tourism Organization on international tourist arrivals, with 45.2 million visitors, which generated a spill of 24.6 billion dollars, representing an increase of 9 percent compared to 2018.
In 2020, in a temporary way and due to the policies that each nation adopted in the face of the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, with 24.3 million visitors our country rose to third place in the ranking of tourist arrivals, only surpassed by France and Italy, with revenues of 11.2 billion dollars, equivalent to a decrease of 55.1 percent compared to the previous year.
In addition, in 2019 the number of United States citizens who traveled to Mexico was 10 million 511 thousand and 5 million 151 thousand in 2020, mainly arriving in Cancun, Los Cabos and Mexico City. The expenditure they made was 10,526 million dollars in 2019 and 5,109 million in 2020.
He argued that given these numbers that show the effect of the pandemic, the recovery of tourist activity is already palpable; For example, from January to July 2020, US tourists spent 2,854 million dollars in Mexico, while in the same period in 2021 the amount was 6,189 million dollars, which represents an increase of 117 percent.
Likewise, in 2019, 22 thousand hotel rooms were built, reaching a national inventory of 830 thousand rooms in 23 thousand lodging establishments.
Secretary Torruco Marqués also met with businessmen from the Chamber of Commerce, to whom he assured that with the great tourist destinations that Mexico has, for decades it has been a great country to invest. For this reason, last August private investment in tourism represented 8,800 million dollars, in 474 projects distributed in the 32 states of the country, which will generate 150,000 new jobs.
In the same way, he showed them some examples of various tourism projects that are being developed, and that could be of interest to them, in Huatulco, Ixtapa, Loreto, Nuevo Vallarta, Chetumal, Barrancas del Cobre and San Luis Potosí, among others.
Later, he had a meeting with leaders of the Mexican-American communities in New York, to whom he presented the Program "Reencounter with my roots", focused on encouraging Mexicans and descendants of Mexicans living in the United States to travel to their places of origin. origin to visit relatives and get to know the towns and cities where their ancestors migrated.
Finally, the secretary Torruco Marqués gave a press conference to the New York media and visited the VisitMexico offices in this city, which were recently inaugurated, thus ending his stay in the city. Tomorrow he will travel to Chicago to continue this work tour.