MEXICO CITY, September 4, 2010 – Mexico’s Secretariat of Tourism recently announced that in July of this year, the number of international tourists arriving in Mexico by air increased by 27.5 percent, in comparison to the same month last year. This July, the airports of the Mexican Republic received 899,172 foreign visitors, a difference of 193,899 passengers in respect to the same time last year.

According to National Institute of Migration, the United States was the main market source for travelers into Mexico, seeing 583,732 Americans arriving in the country, an impressive 20.1 percent increase in comparison to 2009. Mexico also saw an increase in Canadian passengers traveling into the country:  57,587 Canadian travelers visited Mexico in July, an increase of 22,864 passengers. That is to say that there has been a 65.8 percent increase in Canadian travelers into Mexico in relation to the same time last year.

With the United States and Canada holding the top two spots in number of visitors, Spain comes in at number three with 35,893 Spanish travelers visiting Mexico in July, a 57.8 percent increase in respect to 2009. France registered an increase of 39.4 percent, with 17,564 French travelers arriving in July 2010, compared to the 12,597 French passengers that visited Mexico in 2009.

When it comes to Latin America, Argentina is the country with the most air travelers visiting Mexico, seeing 16,235 tourists touching down in one of Mexico’s many airports, representing a 48.3 percent increase from July of last year. And that was just in the month of July alone. Between January and July 2010, more than 108,000 Argentinean travelers visited Mexico, a 51 percent increase from 2009. Brazil is the Latin American country with the second most number of air travelers, with 13,546 arriving in July of this year, a 173 percent increase in comparison to July of 2009. Between January and July of this year, more than 68,000 Brazilians traveled to Mexico, a 106.5 percent increase when compared to the same period in 2009.

From January to July of this year, more than 6 million tourists traveled into Mexico via air, which represents an impressive 19.8 percent increase from the same period in 2009. From January to July 2010, nearly 4 million travelers came from the United States alone, a 16.9 percent increase compared to 2009. Nearly 1 million Canadian tourists traveled to Mexico between January and July of this year, a 20.2 percent increase from 2009.

As visitation has risen this year, so has investment in Mexico’s tourism sector between January and July. Mexico’s Secretary of Tourism, Gloria Guevara Manzo, reported that Mexico’s federal government has invested more than $3 billion into new tourism projects, generating 12,000 new jobs in the tourism sector. Furthermore, Secretary Guevara Manzo reported that from January to June 2010, $1.833 billion dollars were attributed to private sector investment, of which 88.4 percent were from domestic investors and 11.6 percent from foreign investors. These resources were channeled to the development of 402 projects, with 50.4 percent located in the center of the country, 36.6 percent located in beach zones, 9.2 percent in the northern border, and 3.8 percent in the “Mayan world.” The level of private investment has seen a 29.2 percent increase over the amount recorded in the same period of 2009.