Tourist traffic to Mexico has risen sharply in the past 12 months according to a new report from Visa and travel website Expedia.

“Hotels.com (which is owned by Expedia) reported that bookings have increased by 25% in the past year,” says the report and credit card operator Visa has revealed that “people spent 10% more (from $4 billion in 2009 to $4.4 billion in 2010) on their credit cards” in Mexico during the same period.

Expedia now lists Mexico as being one of its top three travel destinations worldwide.

Tourism Secretary Gloria Guevara Manzo has said that the country is achieving “real and sustained progress in making Mexico safe and secure.”

The Ritz Carlton will soon open a new 124-villa complex in Cabo overlooking the Sea of Cortez and Spanish hospitality group Sol Melia is planning to develop two flagship resorts at Riviera Maya on the Caribbean coastline.

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via Overseas Property Professional; News Article; Mexico enjoys huge surge in tourist traffic.

The FDI figure was up by more than $2 billion, compared to the fourth quarter of 2010, when Mexico received $2.75 billion, the secretariat said.

The FDI numbers are preliminary because they are subject to subsequent revisions by companies, the secretariat said.

Some 1,827 companies invested directly in Mexico in the January-March period, with reinvested earnings accounting for 66.8 percent of FDI, while new investment represented 28.3 percent of the total and adjustments between companies accounted for 4.9 percent of the total, the secretariat said.

Some 54.4 percent of FDI went into manufacturing, while trade drew 18.1 percent, mining attracted 12 percent, professional services drew 7.3 percent, real estate attracted 6.1 percent and other sectors drew 2.1 percent, the secretariat said.

The main sources of FDI in Mexico were the United States, accounting for 85.2 percent, Switzerland, with 7.7 percent, Canada, with 2.4 percent, Spain, with 2.3 percent, the Virgin Islands, with 2.2 percent, and all other countries at 0.2 percent.

Mexico received $94.83 billion in FDI between January 2007 and March 2011, the Economy Secretariat said. EFE

Original at: http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=394827&CategoryId=14091

“Those travel alerts that were headlining ‘If you want to stay alive, don’t travel to Mexico,’ we felt they were not only totally inaccurate but irresponsible,” Mexico Tourism Board CEO Rodolfo Lopez-Negrete told Reuters on Thursday.

Mexico is spending millions of dollars on print media and billboard ads in U.S. cities showing its ancient pyramids and sunny beaches to sway Americans from canceling their visits.

While thousands of American tourists have been scared away by the brutal drug war raging in parts of Mexico, Lopez-Negrete said the volume of people visiting Mexican resorts was back up to 2008 levels, although revenues were down because hotels were offering cheaper deals to draw wavering tourists.

“We were able to drive volume upwards at a cost of lower pricing but we are happy with that because as in any other business, volume comes back first, then you start escalating to the proper pricing,” he said. “That’s the strategy.”

Lopez-Negrete said the inaccurate travel alerts were hurting tourism, which accounts for 9 percent of Mexico’s economic output and is its third biggest source of foreign currency.

The drug violence is occurring far from the most popular resorts such as Cancun, Huatulco, Ixtapa, Puerto Vallarta and Los Cabos, the Mexican official said, urging U.S. authorities to be more specific in their alerts.

In March, the Texas Department of Public Safety warned college revelers not to travel to Mexico for spring break with the message: “Stay alive.”

A U.S. State Department advisory issued over the Easter weekend urged U.S. citizens to avoid all but essential travel to 10 states in northern and central Mexico due to “ongoing violence and persistent security concerns.”

While major Mexican resorts were half empty earlier this year, Lopez-Negrete said they were almost full at Easter.

Foreign visitors spent $11.9 billion last year in Mexico, up 5 percent from 2009 when the global economic crisis and H1N1 virus scares took their toll on global tourism. But 2010 figures were still down 10 percent from $13.3 billion in 2008.

More than 37,000 people have been killed in Mexico since late 2006 when President Felipe Calderon took office and sent the Mexican armed forces to crush powerful cartels battling for lucrative smuggling routes to the United States.

Lopez-Negrete said investors trusted the government was going to quell the violence and continued to expand in Mexico.

Luxury hotels are being built in the Riviera Maya and other resort areas by the world’s top hotelier InterContinental Hotel Group, Spain’s largest chain Sol Melia, Hilton hotels, Starwood Hotels & Resorts and AM Resorts LLC, Lopez-Negrete said.

“The appetite continues to be there, because investors know tourism has always been very profitable in Mexico and the quality and value is second to none,” he said. “There is confidence in initiatives President Calderon has taken.”

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Original at: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/13/us-mexico-usa-tourism-idUSTRE74C05220110513

New York (CNN) — Mexico tourism is having a bit of a PR problem lately.

Reports of mass grave sites, daylight shootings and carjackings from the escalating drug war don’t exactly build confidence for a family planning a week’s holiday. And on April 22, the U.S. State Department upgraded its travel warnings to target 14 of Mexico’s 31 states.

Now’s not the time to visit our southerly neighbor, right? Well, wrong. Mexico is a lot safer than you may realize.

We tend to lump all of Mexico — a country the size of Western Europe — together. For example, a border incident resulted in the death of a Colorado tourist last year, and the Texas Department of Homeland Security recommended against travel to all of Mexico.

Yet it’s in the 17 of 31 states not named in the newly expanded warnings where you’ll find the most rewarding destinations: the Yucatan Peninsula and Baja California beach resorts, colonial hill towns like the ex-pat haven of San Miguel de Allende, even the capital Mexico City.

Mexican protesters march to end drug war

An hour inland from Cancun’s beaches, Yucatan state — home to the most popular Mayan sites and “real Mexican” colonial cities such as Merida and Valladolid — is among the country’s safest. The state, with roughly the same population as Kansas, saw two drug-related deaths in 2010. Wichita, Kansas, alone had six gang-related killings over the same period.

Lonely Planet: 8 top places to (safely) visit in Mexico now

Map: Mexico travel guidelines

In most of central and southern Mexico, drug violence simply isn’t on the radar of daily life. “It’s as easy-going as it’s always been,” said Deborah Felixson, a diving operator on Cozumel who is “shocked” when people say they had been scared to go to the Caribbean island. “We’re just small communities here. We all know what everyone’s up to.”

That sentiment is found even in places once linked with political tension, such as Chiapas state and Oaxaca City, where political protest turned into a stand-off in 2006.

“Things are so much quieter now,” said Rogelio Vallesteros, who runs a Spanish-language school in Oaxaca City. “People call to ask about safety all the time, then they come and see how quiet it is. We’re normal, really.”

Mexico tourism official: Vacation spots far removed from violence

After the swine-flu crisis of 2009 — when some cruise ships diverted routes from Mexican ports that had no reported cases to American ones that did — travel bounced back a bit last year. Interestingly, the increase of returning Canadians and many Western Europeans doubled that of the American rate. We seem to remain particularly leery of Mexico.

That’s sad. My love of travel began with childhood visits to Mexican ruins and beaches, and I feel the U.S. is fortunate, not cursed, to be so close to a place that offers jungles, deserts, volcanoes, beaches, coral reefs, ancient pyramids, living pre-European cultures and some of the world’s most satisfying cuisines.

And of course the best reason to go: the people.

A couple years ago, I informally polled various innkeepers and tour operators worldwide to find out who are the world’s friendliest travelers. Guess who won. “Mexicans are such a joy to have here,” one Bulgarian guesthouse owner e-mailed back. “They make everyone feel happier.”

And it’s often better in Mexico, where locals show particular gusto in love of life. Once I saw fireworks go off in Mexico City, before sunset, and asked a local why. He was surprised I didn’t know. “It’s Friday,” he explained.

In restaurants, strangers seeing each other’s eyes instinctively say “buen provecho” before eating. It’s an earnest wish that their food should not only be tasty, but really pleasurable, and that the hope that their life will be a bit better as a result. There really is no English equivalent. Even our adopted “bon appétit” pales in significance.

Naturally, crime exists everywhere in Mexico.

I’ve been pickpocketed in Guadalajara (and in New York, too). But that’s the extent of my unpleasant scrapes in a dozen visits that have taken me to home-stay language courses, traditional Mayan markets, mummy museums, cenotes (surreal limestone sinkholes in which you can swim) and even Zapatista zones in the south.

Most travel to Mexico, ultimately, is simply good travel. It’s fun, affordable, eye-opening and fascinating (seriously, what other city of 21 million other than Mexico City is founded on a filled-in lake?).

But, no, you don’t have to visit Mexico. And there are certainly places, like Ciudad Juarez or Tamaulipas state, I’d never visit now. Just know that the Mexico experienced on the ground almost never matches the Mexico we increasingly see and read about.

Travel expert: Why you should go to Mexico – CNN.com.

via TripAdvisor Travelers’ Choice Destinations Awards – Top 25 – Caribbean & Mexico.

Here comes Easter break again and young people will be young people – high school and college kids will travel to distant places where the drinking age is either less than it is in the U.S. or where authorities don’t care to enforce minors’ drinking laws. For several decades Mexico has been one such place of choice where the legal drinking age is 18. Mazatlan , Acapulco , Puerto Vallarta and Cancun were the fly to favorite places and Rosarito Beach and Ensenada the favorite drive to places from Southern California . – But not this year, or for that matter neither was it last year.

Our government and the U.S. media have convinced most Americans that Mexico is not a safe place to visit as drug traffickers are fighting it out to see which gang will have the right to sell their illicit drugs to the very group that will not be visiting Mexico . They will have to wait until they return from Easter break to get their Mexican smuggled drugs at home.

But what really struck me was that the preferred country to visit this Easter break in lieu of Mexico is the Dominican Republic . It struck me because Dominica is rated as the number one country with the highest propensity for crime in the world. According to facts gathered by NationalMaster.com, their total crime per 1,000 residents (per capita) is 113.822 -Compared to the U.S. that is 8^th in the world in total crimes at 80.0645 per 1000 residents, making chances of being a victim of a crime in Dominica better than 10%, and slightly less than an 8% chance of being a victim in the U.S.

But here is the real clunker – Mexico, the country our government tells us not to visit and the media has a field day reporting any crime be it significant or not to further put the fear of God into staying away from there – well, it ranks 39^th in total crime in the world with a per capita of slightly less than 13 crimes per 1000 residents that is a 1.3% chance of being a victim of crime in Mexico.

So Mexico is out, Dominica is in, yet the chances of being a crime victim there is greater than in the U.S. and the chances of being a crime victim in the U.S. is greater than in Mexico . But, for our own safety we need to stay out of Mexico .

Have you ever felt like you’re being duped but you can’t quite put your finger on why – what’s the motive? Is it to keep us from facing some bitter truths?  We keep reading how crime is down, how safe we are compared to most other parts of the world. But is it true?

So here are some multiple choice questions for you:

1. Which country has a higher crime rate per 1,000 residents?
   1. Mexico, b. Germany, c. Canada, d.  U.S.
2. Which country has the highest murders with firearms?
   1. Mexico, b. El Salvador, c. U.S.
3. Of the following countries, which has the least number of drug offenses?

a. Germany, b. United Kingdom, c. Canada, d. Switzerland, e. Mexico

4. Which country has the most prisoners?

a. United States , b. China , c. Russia , d. India, e. Mexico
(Answers: 1. d. U.S. , 2. c. U.S. , 3. e.  Mexico ,  4. a. U.S.-  Source: http://www.nationmaster.com)

In one of the only bright spots due to its recent gang related murders, Mexico , on a per capita, ranks as more dangerous than the U.S. occupying No. 24 and Mexico No. 6 in the world, but in total number of murders the U.S. is No. 5 and Mexico No. 6.

In fact, much of the crime data per capita 1000 population suggests that in many respects Mexico is safer than the U.S.: in assaults the U.S. ranks No. 6, Mexico No. 20; burglaries the U.S. No. 17, Mexico No. 34; car thefts U.S. No. 9, Mexico No. 22; fraud U.S. No. 18, Mexico No. 29; Rape (Canada No.5), U.S. No. 9, Mexico No. 17.

No doubt that at the expense of Mexico we are being duped. Is it to hide our insatiable appetite for illicit drugs and cheap labor, and so by pointing the finger of guilt to the biggest supplier of both we exculpate our actions or at minimum pacify our own guilt?

Maybe it’s time for “the home of the free, and land of the brave” to take note.
_______________________________________________________________________
Patrick Osio is the Editor of HispanicVista.com (www.hispanicvista.com). Contact at POsioJr@aol.com and co-founder of TransBorder Communications, Inc. (www.transbordercommunications.com) dedicated to binational economic development.

Article on HispanicVista at:

http://www.hispanicvista.com/HVC/Columnist/posiojr/02152011_Patrick_Osio.htm

By Ilaina Jonas
NEW YORK | Mon Jan 3, 2011 8:07am EST

(Reuters) – Foreign investors overwhelmingly ranked the U.S. commercial real estate market as their No. 1 choice for investment this year and viewed it as the best opportunity for price appreciation, according to a survey of foreign real estate investors.

When ranked among countries targeted for real estate investment in 2011, the United States drew four times as many votes as the second-ranked Britain, according to an annual survey by the Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate (AFIRE).

About 65 percent of the survey respondents said the United States offered the best opportunity for price appreciation, far outstripping the 10 percent who ranked China as No. 2. During the overheated market in 2006, only 23 percent put the United States as No. 1.

“As the fear of a double-dip recession has faded, investors are becoming more enthusiastic about the prospects for the U.S. economy and are taking aim at real estate investment opportunities in the U.S.,” said James Fetgatter, AFIRE chief executive.

But the selection of property types also shows that investors are not optimistic about a near-term recovery of U.S. employment.

Foreign investors ranked apartments as No. 1, retail as No. 2, and hotel as No. 3. Office, a typical favorite among institutional investors was fourth, and industrial brought up the rear.

“You talk to economists, and they’re saying that we’re going to have 9 percent or 8 percent unemployment for the next several years. That doesn’t bode well for offices,” Fetgatter said.

The survey respondents hold more than $627 billion of real estate globally, including $265 billion in the United States.

About 72 percent of the respondents said they plan to increase investment in the United States in 2011.

“The increase in the interest and perception of the U.S. was a surprise,” Fetgatter said.

For about the past year, U.S. investors have focused their investment in very select, stable, physically constrained markets, and foreign investors seem to have the same sentiment, according to the survey.

New York and Washington scored almost four times higher than third place Boston.

“They really are focused on New York and Washington and not the entire U.S.,” Fetgatter said. “They’re not hitting a lot of the market yet.”

Rounding out the rankings of countries for investment, Germany came in third. China moved up to No. 4 from No. 5 last year. France dropped to No. 5 from a tie for third place with Germany last year.

Among emerging markets, Brazil displaced China as the No. 1 choice. China came in second, displacing India. Vietnam, which was unranked last year, came in fourth, displacing Mexico, which dropped to No. 5, according to the survey. Russia, which had been among the top five emerging markets in the last two years, dropped to 10th place.

(Reporting by Ilaina Jonas, editing by Dave Zimmerman)

Original: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE7020F220110103

MEXICO CITY

Mexico is experiencing its bloodiest year of drug violence yet, but that’s not stopping domestic and international vacationers alike from flocking to Cancun.

The resort city on the Mexican Caribbean coast, the Riviera Maya coastline below it and the Pacific coast resort of Puerto Vallarta will be named top destinations this year by Orbitz travel website, based on flights and hotel bookings, said spokeswoman Marita Hudson Thomas.

On the Pacific coast, Acapulco Mayor Jose Luis Avila Sanchez is predicting a huge turnout of Mexican travelers, with hotels expected to be nearly full for Christmas and New Year’s Day.

Tourism officials in Mexico and the U.S. say holiday travel to Mexico is up from a year ago as vacationers cash in on low-cost tropical holidays.

Tourism revenue is up 7.1 percent in the first 10 months of 2010, compared to the same months of 2009, with visitors spending $9.8 billion, according to the Mexican Tourism Ministry.

Safety is a problem “only in some parts of Mexico” and it “has not affected the major tourist areas of the country,” said Miguel Torruco Marques, the president of the National Tourism Confederation, which represents the tourism industry.

The confederation projects that about 22.4 million foreigners will have vacationed in Mexico in 2010, a 4.7 percent increase from last year. Adding in the flood of domestic travelers, the group expects 16.1 million tourists throughout the country for December alone.

Air travel to Mexico is up 6 percent this year compared to 2009, according to American Express Travel data, said travel specialist Linda D’Arcy: It’s “all about the value.”

A trip for two from Denver, Colorado, to Cancun now costs as little as $823 per person for airfare and five nights at a hotel, according to the Orbitz site. A trip from the U.S. to the Caribbean could cost double, said Chris Russo, president of the American Society of Travel Agents.

“We’ve had to do a lot of explaining that the Riviera Maya is a long way from the border. It’s just taken more education,” he said. “We have a big map and we show them.”

The Texas Department of Safety warned residents last week not to travel to Mexico for the holidays because of drug cartel violence in northern border cities, as well as in popular tourist towns such as Acapulco.

The Mexican Tourism Ministry retorted by urging “anyone considering a vacation to Mexico to speak with any of the millions of Americans, Canadians, and other foreign nationals who chose to vacation at our resorts this year.”

The government says most of the violence takes place among the drug cartels themselves. More than 30,000 have died in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon launched a military-led offense to quash the cartels in 2006.

Crime figures also show the level of violence varies wildly across the country. The homicide rate in the border state of Chihuahua last year was a horrifying 74 per 100,000. Levels in some other states such as Yucatan, Queretaro or Baja California Sur — where the Los Cabos resorts are located — were 5 per 100,000 or less, which is low to average even by U.S. standards.

In the western state of Michoacan, Calderon’s home state, suspected henchmen from the La Familia cartel battled state and federal police in shootouts for days this month near the state’s capital, Morelia, killing three civilians, including an 8-month-old baby and a teenage girl.

Morelia is on the quaint-colonial-city tourist circuit, but it’s not a draw on the scale of Puerto Vallarta, Huatulco or Cancun.

Cancun’s hotel occupancy rate was about 77 percent for the first days of December, compared to 51 percent during the same time last year, said Rodrigo de la Pena Segura, president of the city’s hotel association. He said the hotels expect occupancy rates as high as 85 percent for Christmas and New Year.

In Cuernavaca, a city about 40 miles (65 kilometers) south of Mexico City that is popular with the capital’s elite and U.S. retirees, five-star hotels had 90 percent occupancy rates during the Dec. 12 holiday weekend celebrating the Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, said Alfredo De La Torre Nunez, a spokesman with the Morelos Tourism Department. That is despite recent battles for control of drug routes through the state by factions of the former Beltran Leyva Cartel.

The same cartel war has affected foreign tourism in Acapulco, where two decapitated bodies were hung from a bridge recently, their amputated hands holding two severed heads.

“Americans are just not coming,” said Jonathan Fabian, who owns a company that rents villas in the city and runs the website, Real Acapulco, a community forum for businesses and tourists. “I would say tourism hasn’t just been in decline; it’s fallen off a cliff. Business has been absolutely horrible.”

But Mexicans are still coming, and the Department of Public Safety in Guerrero, where Acapulco is located, said it would have almost 7,400 state and federal police around the city’s beaches from Dec. 17 to Jan. 9, some in rafts and helicopters.

Torruco Marques said Mexican visitors understand the limits of the drug war.

In Huatulco, located in the state of Oaxaca bordering Guerrero, tourism revenue was up slightly this year at $274 million, compared to $262 million last year. Agustin Pumajero, project director for the new El Secreto resort, said Huatulco is one of the safest places in the country.

“You can go out and walk at 1 a.m. and nothing happens,” he said.

——

Associated Press writers Lorena Moguel in Puerto Vallarta; Gabriel Alcocer in Cancun; and Sergio Flores in Acapulco contributed to this report.

Original: http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9K9OOI80.htm