The federal Ministry of Tourism announced that in the first nine months of the year, Cancun International Airport has already attracted 7.1 million international tourists, which maintains it as the terminal with the highest volume of foreign travelers nationwide.
The Cancun terminal, along with Mexico City International Airport (AICM) and Los Cabos, have attracted 11.7 international tourists, which is 62% more than in 2021; also surpassing by 6.5% the international tourist arrivals of 2019, when 11 million travelers arrived at those three airports during the reference period.
The most important international market for Mexico continues to be the United States, with a total of 9,712,050 visitors, of which 4,161,426 arrived through the Cancun International Airport, that is, 42.8%, well above the 1.2 million that entered the country through the AICM and the 1.4 million from the Los Cabos terminal.
However, the coming recession in the United States in 2023 has become the central issue of many tourism experts as the Fitch rating agency anticipates that Mexico will be the most affected economy in Latin America.
According to the analysis, the main channel of transmission to Mexico during this recession will be the reduction of external demand. But it will also be transmitted via remittances, tourism and commodity prices.
The second biggest source market for Mexico is Canada, with 1.1 million visitors, of which 616,752 arrived via Cancun, or 56.3% during the first nine months of the year.
With a total of 632,134 visitors, the third most important market for Mexico is already Colombia, ahead of the United Kingdom -which has been relegated to fourth place-, Spain, France, Brazil and Argentina. Of this volume, 308,780 arrived to the country via Cancun, that is, 48.8%, only behind Mexico City, which attracted 312,321 Colombians.
In descending volume, it is followed by the United Kingdom with 430,735 travelers, of which 343,202 entered through Cancun, that is, 79.6%; Spain with 273,710 travelers at the national level, of which 140,553 arrived in Mexico through Cancun, which represents 51.3% of the total.
At the end of the third quarter of the year, Cancun International Airport (AIC) reported an unprecedented growth of 15.6% over the pre-pandemic levels.
According to the monthly report prepared by the consortium Aeropuertos del Sureste (Asur), in the first nine months of the year the terminal has already mobilized 22.3 million passengers, that is, 3 million more than what was mobilized in the same period of 2019, when the airport reported 19.3 million passengers.
Of the total mobilized 14.7 million are international travelers, or 16.2% more than the 12.6 million in 2019 in the reference period.
Likewise, a total of 7.6 million domestic passengers have been mobilized through the AIC in the reference period, representing a growth of 14.5% with respect to the 6.7 million mobilized in 2019.
The director of the air terminal, Carlos Trueba Coll, said in July of this year that, if the double-digit growth trend continues, the record of 27 million passengers will most likely be broken by the end of 2022, a figure never before reached.