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Uno, Dos, Tres, Cuatro—Mexico’s Top Tens 

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One sure sign that the travel and tourism industry in Mexico is focused on recovery and rejuvenation—and not on such phrases as pre-pandemic and “2019 levels”—has been the focus of the Mexican travel trade publisher pasillo turÍstico in its past several issues on figures from its industry-wide survey for the past year, 2021. The publisher provides a Top Ten for four key travel industry segments, along with some useful commentary on each.

Because it borders the U.S., it is a challenge to try to measure the overall (and often, overlooked) impact and importance of Mexico’s tourism importance to the United States. First, it contributes about a quarter (23 percent) of the overall inbound visitor traffic to come to the USA. In 2019, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Travel and Tourism Office, about 18.3 million residents of Mexico visited the U.S., out of all international visitors, which totaled 79.4 million.

At the same time that Mexico is important to the USA’s inbound tourism industry, the United States is an important source marketing for Mexico’s inbound tourism. Simply stated, the USA is important to Mexico, and Mexico is important to the United States. 

Following are the Top 10 from the country’s operator, airline, hotel chain and cruise ship segments. (If you do not understand Spanish, you can use Google Translate.)

Top 10 Wholesale Operators in Mexico*

Operator & Ranking% of Survey Votes
1. Mega Travel55.36%
2. OPESA17.98%
3. Sierra Madre7.74%
4. Euromundo3.69%
5. PE-TRA1.90%
6. Extratur1.67%
7. Travel Inn1.55%
8. Travel Shop1.31%
9. Mundo Cruceros y Viajes0.95%
10. Azabache and Record Vacation0.71%
Others6.43%

*The survey was taken from January 1 to 15, 2022, through the Tourist Corridor database.

Click here to read the complete article.

Top 10 Airlines Serving Mexico

Airline & Ranking% of Survey Votes
1. Aeroméxico29.88%
2. Volaris15.71%
3. Turkish Airlines12.86%
4. Viva Aerobus11.79%
5. Emirates5.24%
6. Iberia4.64%
7. Air France4.29%
8. Lufthansa3.19%
9. American Airlines2.38%
10. United Airlines2.26%
Others7.86%

Click here to read the complete article.

Top 10 Hotel Chains Serving Mexico

Hotel Chain & Ranking% of Survey Votes
1. Riu Hotels & Resorts18.38%
2. AMR Collection8.47%
3. Marriott7.40%
4. Hilton5.01%
5. Palace Resorts4.53%
6. Iberostar4.06%
7. Barceló 3.58%
8. Hotel Xcaret3.34%
9. Karisma2.86%
10. Meliá2.39%
Others39.98%

Click here to read the complete article.

Top 10 Cruise Lines Serving Mexico

Cruise Line & Ranking% of Survey Votes
1. Royal Caribbean50.24%
2. MSC Cruises8.10%
3. Celebrity Cruises6.07%
4. Princess Cruises5.24%
5. Disney Cruise Line3.93%
6. Carnival Cruises/Norwegian Cruise Line (tie)3.33%
7. Holland America Line1.79%
8.  Silversea Cruises1.19%
9. Pullmantur Cruises0.95%
10. Crystal Cruises0.60%
Others15.24%

Click here to read the complete article.

Mexico’s Top Hotel Websites Listed

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Also, USA is Top International Destination for Mexican Travelers: While not an issue covered closely by the travel and tourism trade news media in the U.S., the question of where travelers from Mexico and, more broadly speaking, Latin America, book the hotel component of their travels shows that local or regional websites are an integral part of the path to purchase among Mexicans and Latin Americans. Mexico is, after all, the second-largest source of international visitors to the USA.  

Just recently, the Mexico City-based travel news portal, Pasillico Touristico, covered the release of a list of the top hotel booking channels used by travelers from Mexico. It showed that global brands are at the top of the list, but that regional brands are strong and popular, according to SiteMinder, a guest acquisition platform. SiteMinder based its rank on the total gross revenue for all users of the platform.

SiteMinder released its findings in two parts—one for the full-year results of 2021 and another for the roughly nine months of the year left after the restoration of hotel reservations following a virtual lockdown of activity. 

In both lists, Expedia, Booking.com and Hotelbeds comprise the Top 3, followed by the generic hotel website, where consumers made direct bookings.

But Numbers 5, 6 and 7 were Price Travel (headquartered in Cancún); Best Day (also based in Cancún); and Despegar, which is headquartered in Buenos Aires, but operates across 20 countries in Latin America.

Meanwhile, another study says USA is No. 1 for Mexicans. Online travel agency Despegar (No. 7 channel among Mexicans for booking hotel rooms) released findings of its own analysis of booking data and said that the international destinations most sought after by Mexicans to travel during 2021 are: the United States, Spain, Colombia and Argentina.

Despegar said that, for the United States, among the reasons why it tops among Mexicans: “the favorite country of Mexicans given its proximity, cultural diversity, natural landscapes … make it an unbeatable tourist attraction and endless adventures that can be done in large cities. Among the destinations preferred by Mexicans are New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago and Houston.”

Notes on the LATAM Market

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Should I stay or should I go? Brazilians split on travel. With the country’s summer travel season upon us and, its people are divided between traveling or staying in isolation. As the trade publication, Diário Turismo put it, “and the temptation to travel is great, but how do you reconcile the desire for rest with the COVID-19 pandemic and the need for isolation?” A survey by the research firm Fronte Pesquisa asked 750 Brazilian consumers late last month what they intended to do about traveling in the following months ahead. The results:

—21 percent said they should travel, whether or not a vaccine is available in Brazil.

—However, the same percentage, 21 percent, said that they will stay home because of insecurity about the evolution of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

—A plurality of the respondents, 34 percent, should travel only if a vaccine is available.

—Among the population with the highest income, the intention to travel only if there is a vaccine available rises to 43 percent.

—Among those who have children at home, the trip due to the existence of a vaccine is considered by 41 percent.

—Women are more concerned and more careful about the pandemic, with 25 percent saying they will stay at home, whether or not they have a vaccine, because they feel insecure with COVID-19

—Click here for the complete article.

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Travel Impressions Mexico Shuts Down: The operator was/is a brand of the Apple Leisure Group, which is headquartered in suburban Philadelphia PA. It announced earlier this month that they were suspending commercial activity, indicating they will continue to operate to serve all existing reservations with departures until the definitive closing date scheduled for December 30. September 2021. For this reason, they will not accept new reservations as of today.
 
Said the statement: “Travel Impressions Mexico has had many successes, respect and recognition in its more than 45 years of history, working together with our clients, suppliers and other business partners. However, the ongoing impact of COVID-19 has been so severe that the difficult decision was made to cease business activity in Mexico. Rest assured that during this process we will honor our commitments and we will ensure that we carry out a gradual closure of our company in an orderly manner over the next nine months.”

In the meantime, the company said: 
—A team of leaders will remain in the company until March 31, 2021 and will be available to answer any questions.
—A team from call center, operations and finance will continue working until September 30 to follow up on all existing reservations.
—Service hours during this period will be from Monday to Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.

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Eastern Airlines has launched service between Miami and Asunción, Paraguay on January 3rd. The flight will operate twice-weekly. The launch flight took off from Miami at 0059, one minute ahead of schedule, and landed in the Paraguayan capital at 1105 after eight hours and six minutes. The return flight departed at 23:45 and touched back in Miami at 05:51 on January 4th. American Airlines was the last carrier to operate Miami to Asunción. It served it between 2012 and 2015, according to OAG.

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Panama-based airline Copa is back operating to Tampa Airport from Panama City. The re-start began on January 8th following a period of eight months. Copa is currently operating the route twice-weekly, but it will return to once-a-day daily from the end of May. Copa is the only carrier on the route, which began in 2013.  In, the airline had almost 73,000 seats on it.  Frequency varied from three-a-weekly to seven-a-week. Airline news analyst anna•aero notes that the route revolves around connectivity over Panama City. Booking data show that around 78 percent of passengers transited. Colombia was by far the single-largest country market, with over twice as many passengers as No. 2 Ecuador.

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Increased Air Service from Mexico to Houston: Viva Aerobus, Mexico’s ultra-low-cost airline, has strengthened its presence in Houston with a new route from Cancun and with an increase in flights from Mexico City and Monterrey to Houston. Cancun-to-Houston is already in operation with one flight a week. Also, for this month of January, Viva offers George Bush Intercontinental Airport up to 6 flights a week from Mexico City (a route just launched last year), and up to 11 weekly frequencies from Monterrey. As a result, Viva Aerobus registers a 185 percent increase in its flight offer to and from Houston compared to the first quarter of 2020, offering more than 92 thousand seats considering its regular routes from Mexico City, Cancun and Monterrey. Viva already has 8 routes in Texas, flying from Dallas and San Antonio to Mexico City and Monterrey; and from Houston to Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey and, now, to Cancun.

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United Airlines will have an additional frequency between Rio de Janeiro and Houston. Beginning February 3, there will be four flights a week. Operating with a 767-300, the flight will depart on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays and Saturdays. On Thursdays, it leaves the Galleon at 11:45 pm and arrives in Houston at 7:15 am the next day. On the other days, the takeoff from Rio is at 21:45 and arrive in Houston at 5:15.

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Brazil not expected to recover losses till end of 2022: The Brazilian travel and trade magazine PANROTAS reports: “Despite having grown for the sixth consecutive month, tourism activities are still 30 percent below the pre-pandemic level, according to data from the National Confederation of Trade in Goods, Services and Tourism (CNC), referring to November 2020. ‘The expectation is that the sector will not be able to recover losses before the end of 2022, with a drop of 36.8 percent in 2020,’ says economist Fábio Bentes, from CNC.” Click here for the complete article.

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The Top Five Operators in Mexico Named: According to a recent survey of travel agents in Mexico, Mega Travel is far and away at the top of the ranking. The ranking, which based on the votes of the agents, appeared in the travel trade publication, Pasillo Turístico. In the ranking, many travel agents expressed their gratitude to Mega Travel for its help and support during the pandemic.

Click here for a copy of the complete article.

Will Canada/Mexico Stay a Static Market?

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What Hope is There for a Rejuvenated Source Market of the USA’s Neighbors? In the case of Canada and Mexico, the global pandemic triggered just about a year ago by the breakout of the COVID-19 virus infected a market that was already experiencing a long-term case of the blahs; this is not good news for the U.S. because about a half of all international visitors to the United States come from Canada and Mexico combined.

And it certainly has been a big case of the blahs. Take a look at the tables below. In the most recent five-year window (2015 thru 2019) for which we have meaningful data and one will see that visitor levels generated for both country markets were almost exactly the same in 2019 as they were for 2015. No upward nor downward movement at all.

INBOUND took a look at the data to see if there might be some relationship, some correlation between some data that could answer two of the most commonly-referred-to causes that travel and tourism marketers suggest in trying to explain why the two markets have been such sluggish performers. We wanted to see how the data movement was related to the two most commonly cited reasons for the flat markets. (Caution: correlation does mean causation.)

1. Most often cited as a reason or guess was the political environment in the United States. Many tour operators and receptive tour operators, as well as U.S. travel suppliers have a negative opinion of now-former U.S. President Donald Trump.

Sure enough, inbound travel from Mexico dropped more than 6 percent in 2017, the first year of the Trump presidency. During that year, Trump’s approval rating among Mexicans dropped to single-digit percentages. Still, visitation from Mexico returned to almost the same five-year level in 2018.

Besides, there are so many people in the United States (according to a 2017 Pew Research Center analysis) with family ties to the U.S. Mexicans, which are the largest population of Hispanic origin living in the United States—more than 36 million the study said.  They accounted for 62 percent of the U.S. Hispanic population in 2017. Since 2000, the Mexican-origin population has increased 76 percent, growing from 20.9 million to 36.6 million over the period. 

Also, Mexicans have an easier time navigating their way to and through the United States which has more Spanish-speaking people than does Spain.

So, despite what most Mexicans might have felt about Donald Trump personally, it apparently did not have a meaningful impact on their numbers when it came to the matter of visiting the U.S.

And Canadians? According to an October 2018 Pew study, only 25 percent of Canadians rated Trump positively. While not a positive figure, it is still a better reading than Trump had in Mexico. And there were few claims that his popularity, or lack thereof, had a noticeable impact on travel to the U.S.

2. It appears that the currency exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and both the Canadian dollar and the Mexican peso has had more of an impact than any other stand-alone factor.

Take the case of Canada. INBOUND recalled a conversation back in the middle of the past decade with a U.S. travel supplier who depended heavily on Canadian visitor traffic that made overnight trips in to bordering New York State. He told us that businesses were able to absorb the financial impact when the Loonie (another name for the Canadian dollar) fell to 75 cents on the dollar but, below that meant real pain. Sure enough, the value of the Loonie against the U.S. dollar-drop by 23 percent from 2014 to 2016 to 72 cents. Visitor traffic fell by 2.3 million! The Loonie has clawed its way back to 79 cents vs. the dollar.

The Mexican peso, meanwhile fell by more than 28 percent from the end of 2014 to the beginning of 2017, during which Mexican traffic fell by more than 1 million visitors..

Correlation or Causation? We can’t say with certainty, but the data above certainly seem to suggest that the decline in the value of the Loonie and the peso had something to do with the no growth path of Canadian and Mexico visitation to the U.S.

Q: Will the situation change?

A: Of course, it will. Connect Travel, which publishes the INBOUND Report, held several webinar virtual roundtables during the past year that brought together Canadian tour operators, sell the U.S. product as well as domestic Canadian tour operators who send visitors to the U.S. and other parts of Canada.

If there was one message that seemed to ring loudly through all of the discussion about when the market would begin to recover and which segment (domestic or international) would recover first, it really didn’t have to deal with where Canadian travelers would visit in the USA. It all had to do with a pent-up demand that is ready to explode once it is safe to travel. As of this writing, there seems to be a consensus that it will likely be no sooner than end of the second quarter or during the beginning of Q3.

In the interim, all of the data churned out by NTTO will be there to study for full-year 2020 and full-year 2021 but these won’t meaning—except for monthly or quarterly data that can be matched to the same months in the data for 2019 and before—for some months ahead. Then, maybe, Canada can put the blahs behind.

DEEP DIVE: The Mexican Market–What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Answer: Plenty

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Delegates to last month’s IPW received the latest updates on key markets¹ from in-market representatives of Brand USA. For the most part, the outlook for Mexico was mildly positive. Despite a dramatic drop in the value of the Mexican peso vs. the U.S. dollar (see table below) in 2015 and 2016, the peso seems to have stabilize and, with it, so has the outlook for inbound tourism from the country which, according to the latest estimate from the U.S. National Travel and Tourism Office (NTTO), supplies almost a quarter (23 percent) of all international visitor to the United States. NTTO has projected annual increases in visitor volume from Mexico of two to three percent through 2021.

What Could Go Wrong? For many who follow developments in Mexico, what could go wrong is already going wrong and could get worse. That is, the Administration of President Donald Trump is preparing to drop out of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)—the 1994 trade pact between Mexico, Canada and the United States—if the U.S. cannot improve its terms. Most analysts agree that the dissolution of NAFTA would hurt Mexico the most. In addition, recent tariff measures imposed on Mexican imports by Trump have only exacerbated the trade picture.

Also, President Trump is singularly unpopular in Mexico, with an approval rate in the single digits—an unpopularity that has translated into a diminished regard for the U.S. itself. All four candidates in the July 1 presidential election in Mexico are sharply critical of Trump.

With the above as preface, we have synopsized the information that Brand USA presented at IPW in its market update.

About Mexico—Demographics

  • Population: 124.6 million.
  • Country is second largest user of Internet in Latin America, behind only Brazil.
  • Twenty-one percent of population comprises high and upper middle class.
  • Mexicans who have private health insurance: 43.57 percent.
  • More than half (51.8 percent) of its population are between 18-44 years old.
  • Percentage of overall population under 50 years old: 85.28 percent.
  • Thirty-five percent are millennials.
  • Of overall population, 48.8 percent are male; 51.2 percent are female.
  • Among nations of the world, it ranks No.11 in population.

Source: CIA, World Fact book 2018, INEGI, ComScore     

About Mexico—Economy

  • Its $2.406 trillion in GDP makes in the 12th largest in the world.
  • It is the No. 2 economy in Latin America.
  • GDP real growth rate is 2.1 percent.
  • Per capita GDP is $19,500
  • Unemployment rate is 3.6 percent.
  • Inflation rate is 5.9 percent.

Source: CIA World Fact book 2018

Trend: Increasing Traveling and Increasing Spending

  • Mexican visitors to USA spent $20.3 billion on travel to and within U.S.
  • Mexico ranked No. 2 market in spending after China.
  • While the number of Mexican travelers decreased in 201/17, the average spent per visitors increased.

(Source: U.S Department of Commerce, ITA; National Travel & Tourism Office, Bureau of Economic Analysis)

Airline Seat Capacity: There has been an increase of 10 percent in seat capacity between both nations, resulting I more frequencies, new routes, new airlines and new gateway cities. Much of the growth stems from the success of the low cost carrier Volaris, a young carrier that began service to the U.S. less than a decade ago, and now has a fleet of planes almost the size of Aeroméxico, Mexico’s flag carrier. Also, Delta Air Lines has increased capacity substantially in recent years.

Source:  Dirección General de Aeronáutica Civil (DGAC), from the Ministry of Transports and Communicactions of Mexico. 2016 vs 2017

 

Mexico’s Gateway Cities

 

Source: Dirección General de Aeronáutica Civil (DGAC), from the Ministry of Transports and Communicactions of Mexico. Feb 2018

 

U.S. Gateway Cities

 

Source:  Dirección General de Aeronáutica Civil (DGAC), from the Ministry of Transports and Communicactions of Mexico. Feb 2018

Market Trends

—Mexico is the largest consumer of video in Latin America.

—By 2020, Mexicans will grow from having 78 million smartphones (2016) to 90.7 million.

—Digital marketing is increasing considerably; it is forecast to increase by 50 percent over previous years.

—Marketers in Mexico allocate 50 percent into event marketing as a source of creating “storytelling” and “client interaction and experiences.”

—70 percent of brand engagement comes from working with influencers.

Source: ComScore, El Economista

Trend: Television audiences are shrinking in comparison to other media platforms, although overall viewership in Mexico is still in excess of 54 million viewers.

Source: NIELSEN MSS – 2016

 

Trend: YouTube is Capturing the Attention of Millennials

Source: MSS. IBOPE

Trend: Integration of Technology for Travel Journey

—77 percent of Mexican travelers will prefer the use of technology to plan their holidays.

—One third (33 percent) of Mexican travelers say that they feel comfortable if a computer organizers their trips based on their past travels.

—77 percent of Mexican travelers would like to use Virtual Reality, if available, before booking their next holidays.

—71 percent Mexican travelers said that OTAs personalized suggestions are very important when they decide to book.

—72 percent of Mexican travelers will use travel apps.

—Mexican travelers share their travel experiences via social media across all age groups; young millennials also share memories on Instagram.

Source: Booking.com

Top 10 Online Booking Sites

  1. Best Day Travel
  2. Despegar.com
  3. Price Travel
  4. Expedia
  5. Booking.com
  6. Almundo
  7. American Express
  8. Mundo Joven
  9. Carlson Wagonlit
  10. BTI – Business Travel International

Source: Euromonitor International

 

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