During the first quarter of the year, more than 800,000 tourists arrived in Los Cabos, in Baja California Sur, which represented a growth of 13% compared to 2019. In this period, the destination also registered a monthly record of visitors, of almost 325,000 travelers during March, the largest monthly flow in its history.
Although the destination’s growth has been driven mainly by foreign tourists – who made up 80% of total visitors in 2021 – the domestic segment has played a key role. In this regard, Rodrigo Esponda, director of the Los Cabos Tourism Trust (Fiturca), explains that Mexican tourists have fueled the flow of the peninsula along with other factors.
“We have a higher proportion of new travelers, between Mexicans and foreigners. Before the pandemic, 60% of tourists had already visited Los Cabos and 40% were new visitors; now, 60% know the destination for the first time”, says the representative of the tourism sector.
In addition to the increase in tourists, hotels have also had an increase in their rates. While in 2019 the average per night was 350 dollars, for this year it rose to 450.
Esponda attributes the increase in Mexican and foreign tourists to an increase in air travel, the largest gateway for travelers. To date, the seat capacity offered by US airlines – which made up 98% of international travelers in 2021, in the absence of other markets such as Canada – is 33% higher than in 2019.
Similarly, the supply of seats from Mexico City –one of the fastest growing source cities for Los Cabos– increased by 35%.
According to Fiturca data, Los Cabos has more than 500 weekly flights that connect with 26 cities in the United States and seven in Mexico. For the first half of this year a growth of 1.3 million seats is expected.
Air connectivity is expected to continue to grow both within Mexico and from other markets abroad beyond the United States, such as Europe. Esponda affirms that the destination is in talks with two European airlines that already operate in Mexico, and that they could open new flights between the winter of this year and the spring of 2023.
In the short term, Fiturca expects bookings to the destination to remain strong during the spring travel season, with an 11% increase in advance bookings projected for April 2022, 22% in May and 10% in June.
For this year, Los Cabos expects to receive 3 million visitors, an increase of approximately 9% compared to the 2.76 that arrived in 2021. Similarly, it expects the average stay to rise from 6.7 to 7 days due to the increase in long-term markets. stay, like the Canadian, and expect the average spend to remain at $3,000.
