Known for being two of the main beach destinations in the country, Los Cabos and Puerto Vallarta had their best summer season on record this year.
This is because Mexico continues to take advantage of its status as a close and open destination without restrictions for tourists from the United States, according to specialists.
Los Cabos and Puerto Vallarta airports received a total of 1.9 million passengers between July and August of this year when the summer vacation period occurred, data from Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico (GAP) shows.
This is the best summer season in history, after serving 165,000 more tourists than in the summer of 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic.
The majority of tourists who arrive by plane to Los Cabos and Puerto Vallarta come from the United States, where the authorities continue to request a negative test of contagion of Covid-19 to all passengers who intend to travel to the U.S.; while Canada declared that with a tentative date of September 7, international flights will be reopened for people who are vaccinated and who meet certain conditions issued by the government.
The summer season is traditionally a period of great importance for tourism; International destinations prepare in advance to compete in the travel market and Mexico has traditionally been a relevant player, explains the most recent report from Grupo Empresarial Estrategia (Gemes).
Although the pandemic that the world has been facing since the beginning of 2020 changed tourism and currently, in the middle of the summer season, international tourist flows are contracted and many borders are still closed, “for Mexico, these circumstances have become an advantage because it has not closed its air borders and its destinations are open to tourism, which has resulted in a faster recovery of international tourism”.
However, Gemes warns that the strong dependence that Mexico’s tourism has on the United States can impact both positively and negatively, and therein lies the risk of the country’s situation, since the position of advantage in the international tourism may change when the health crisis worsens (which could cause a market contraction), or when the supply of other destinations opens, as is already a fact in the case of Canada, which also shares strong ties with the United States.
