Cancun celebrates 53rd anniversary with record tourism figures

Cancun celebrates its 53rd anniversary with tourism growth figures that exceed the historic record set just last year.

At the end of the first quarter of this year, Cancun International Airport handled a total of 8.4 million passengers, compared to the 7 million passengers handled in the same period in 2022, when it set a record of 30.3 million passengers.

In other words, Cancun is still growing beyond that record high.

According to the Federal Ministry of Tourism, from January to February 2023, the main countries of international tourist arrivals by air to Mexico were the United States, Canada and Colombia, with 2 million 836,000 tourists; this is 24.3% more than the same period of 2022, and also exceeds by 15.1% the 2,463,000 thousand tourists of 2019.

From the U.S. market, Cancun attracted 771,742 travelers, or 37.5% of the 2,056,143 North Americans who came to our country in the January-February period of this year. In second place was Los Cabos, which attracted 348,438, or 16.9%, less than half the number of visitors from the Mexican Caribbean.

The total number of Canadians was 663,740, of which Cancun attracted 335,256, or 50.2%, followed by Puerto Vallarta with 156,973, or 23.6%.

Finally, the number of Colombians in the first two months of the year was 116,387, of which 51,826, or 44.5%, arrived in Cancun.

Agencies such as Despegar place Cancun as a tourism leader in Latin America, with double-digit growth in bookings during 2022 and first place among the most sought-after destinations.

By the end of 2023, the year of Cancun’s 53rd anniversary, it is expected to grow at a rate of 4% over 2022 in terms of overnight tourist volume.