Tourism in Mexico: a complicated relationship

Published July 14, 2022

Mexico is one of the most visited countries in the world, its recent rise in the ranks of the figures of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) are the pride of the national tourism policy, commanded by the Ministry of Tourism (SECTUR) in recent decades.

According to statistics from the World Tourism Barometer in 2021, Mexico became the 2nd most visited country on the planet with 51 million international arrivals. While Mexico was greatly affected by the fall in tourism during the Covid-19 pandemic that began in 2020, the impact was global and other tourist powers such as Spain and the United States felt even more the stoppage of the arrival of visitors. However, Mexico kept its borders open and international visitors have steadily increased.

But beyond the honorable title of second tourist country worldwide, in the country (and around the world) tourism is still far from being environmentally, socially and economically sustainable.

The notion of sustainable tourism that has been advocated, at least since the 1990s, states that: sustainable tourism must allow its development without compromising the natural, heritage, social and cultural resources of the host communities. That is the guide and the ‘good practices’ at the international level are improvising to comply with some of the sustainable aspects of tourism exploitation.

Sometimes we think about including local societies in tourist activities, sometimes we think about restricting attendance, we also think about compensatory fees or taxes or the energy efficiency of the hotel industry. However, reality confronts us with a contradiction of origin: tourism is in principle a consumption and, therefore, works by exploiting, exhausting and altering the socio-spatial context visited. And this is a story of more than 150 years, although it was until about 30 years ago, that the wear and tear became alarming, with a peak of more than 1,500 million world tourists in 2019.

In Mexico City, tourism reached a relatively high point in the previous couple of years, considering the SARS-COV-2 pandemic. The Mexican capital was one of the destinations to receive a significant influx of national and international visitors; about 6.8 million in hotels in 2021.

Some of the reasons that can explain this good reception of visitors, in particular foreigners, were the much more flexible confinement restrictions than in the northern countries; and the exchange rate difference with a much lower cost of living than in the countries of origin.

As a symptom, social media platforms TikTok, Instagram and Twitter are replete with posts discussing how ‘cheap’ and how much Mexico City is trendy. In terms of social and economic sustainability, this has generated an increasing reaction from locals.

The areas of the city that are the most likely to appear on Instagram or travel blogs are inaccessible to the average Mexican, while many tourists can afford them thanks to their salaries in dollars or euros.

The appearance of colonies such as La Condesa, Roma, Polanco and Juárez in social media posts is recurrent. Those vital stories, to build the tourist imaginaries, suggest everything from ‘Mexico City is a fairy tale’ to ‘do yourself a favor and work remotely from Mexico City: it’s really magical’.

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