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Travel’s Stunning Rebound Is Snowballing Cancun’s Success
The Mexican Ministry Of Tourism is forecasting a massive summer haul as travel rebounds, with Cancun taking center stage in the success. As many as fifty-one million visitors could travel throughout Mexico, and twenty-two million stay in hotels.
So-called “Revenge Travel” is well underway as the summer figures begin to trickle in across the globe. After two years of isolation and border closures, travelers are back in numbers and Cancun is enjoying the development. Although the popular beachside town, and the rest of Mexico, never closed, the floodgates have been removed from other countries. Millions of travelers are expected to spill into Cancun and Quintana Roo over the summer, with occupancy rates looking extremely strong.
The figures released by the Ministry of Tourism are interesting, as a huge chunk of the projections is based on Mexican nationals traveling to stay with families – half of the statistics in fact. It is unclear where these projections came from other than conjecture based on the previous year’s statistics.
The 22 million is an important figure, with at least four to five million of those international tourists. It’s also interesting to note that a further 2 and a half million International tourists have been factored into the other twenty-eight million staying with friends or family. The figures are representative for July and August only.
Cancun is fully expected to receive the largest percentage of those tourists. The seaside resort town is comfortably the most popular destination in Mexico, with its airport only seeing competition from Mexico City, one of the busiest airports in the world. The airport is averaging over five hundred flights a day, a staggering figure, and with Tulum’s own hub on the way in the near future, the number of tourists visiting Quintana Roo is only set to grow.
The Maya Train is also expected to draw in a different demographic of tourists, interested in the cultural side of the state, including its rich history of Mayan Ruins dotting the coast. With travelers now able to navigate the area without the need for a tour guide, an entirely new avenue is opened up for Cancun and even the smaller towns between there and Tulum.
For tourists hoping to head to Cancun or Quintana in the coming weeks, that means some crowds should be expected both at the pool and on the beach. Occupancy levels are already approaching the mid-eighties in some cases, so there are still plenty of rooms available. Those who typically visit during isolated holidays like Christmas and Easter might be pleasantly surprised, as the crowds will be spread over a much longer period than usual.
It’s a strong return for travel to the region. The statistics suggest that, if these numbers hold up, it will be an almost full recovery to 2019 figure, long before the pandemic effectively shut the travel industry down worldwide.
There is hope there will be another surge from the United States after the government made the decision to cut the mandatory testing for tourists returning to the country. Figures showed that as much as 75% of travelers that were choosing not to venture internationally had done so because of the fear of logistical issues stemming from a positive test.
While many other countries had dropped their own rules, the US held on to theirs, leaving many international travelers stranded in other countries for as long as a week as they waited for a negative test. But with that fear now mitigated, tourists may be tempted into more last-minute getaways. The revenge travel trend is seeing tourists spend far more than in previous years, opting for more direct flights, better rooms, more upgrades, and more all-inclusive packages- all things that play perfectly into Cancun’s model.
Tourists hoping to travel should start looking for hotels sooner rather than later, as price hikes will be expected as rooms start to dwindle.
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