Tourism Council Backs 20% Promotion Budget Hike for Quintana Roo as International Air Seats Slump

Cancún, Quintana Roo — Mexico’s National Tourism Business Council (CNET) has endorsed Governor Mara Lezama’s decision to increase funding for Quintana Roo tourism promotion, as the country’s beach destinations confront a drop in international airline seats and a need to counter negative perceptions about insecurity and sargassum.

The endorsement came during the presentation of the “Panorama of Mexican Tourism” report, produced by CNET and the Advanced Tourism Research Center at Anáhuac Cancún University, where industry executives reviewed the challenges facing beach destinations at the close of the year’s second four-month period and the outlook for the final months.

Asked about the organization’s view of the 20% increase in the tourism promotion budget and its recommendations for boosting activity in Quintana Roo, CNET president Antonio Cosío Pando called the allocation a timely measure that should be replicated nationwide to offset gaps in federal tourism promotion.

He said the initiative is an example worth following: while strengthening Quintana Roo is urgent, he argued, the effort should extend to destinations such as Los Cabos, Puerto Vallarta and Mexico City.

Cosío Pando added that the money should be paired with coordinated work between the private sector and the federal Tourism Ministry through the recently formed Marketing Committee, which focuses not only on traditional advertising but also on crisis management to improve how Mexico is perceived abroad.

Air seats from the US shrink 13%

Francisco Madrid, of Anáhuac Cancún, said in the report that beach destinations have been through a complicated stretch driven by macroeconomic and operational factors. Among the data presented: a 13% contraction in scheduled air seats from the United States to Mexican beaches for the last quarter of the year.

By contrast, air connectivity from Canada to coastal areas is up 9.1%, a shift driven by trade tensions between Canada and the United States that have led travelers to choose Mexico, and Quintana Roo in particular.

The changing profile of foreign visitors hit cultural sites in the Mexican Caribbean directly between January and August, when the archaeological zones of Tulum and Chichén Itzá recorded declines of 27% and 25.8% in international visitors, respectively.

On Tulum and northern Quintana Roo specifically, CNET representatives said government investments announced to contain sargassum will be key to limiting environmental damage on the beaches.

The industry is also counting on year-end events and the start of high season to reverse the summer slowdown — for which, they said, it is essential to spend promotional funds effectively and to communicate the region’s real security conditions more forcefully.

International arrivals projected to fall 6%

Estimates reviewed by the Advanced Tourism Research Center at Anáhuac Cancún for the end of the year reflect the scale of the industry’s stall.

International tourist arrivals by air are projected to fall 6% to 21.4 million, which would hold total foreign-currency tourism revenue at $35 billion — the same figure as the previous year.

The slowdown reflects deteriorating business sentiment: 70.7% of respondents rated the period’s results as worse or much worse than expected. The picture is aggravated by a collapse in formal employment in accommodation services in the country’s main international tourism hubs, with drops of 6.5% in Jalisco, 4.4% in Nayarit, 3.2% in Baja California Sur and 2.7% in Quintana Roo.