Tourists quickly enter Mexico, despite COVID-19

At a time when other countries carry out diagnostic tests at airports, contact tracing and order mandatory isolation, Mexican authorities boasted Wednesday of the speed with which tourists leave the air terminal of the coastal destination of Cancun.

Visitors took an average of one to two minutes to enter the country, the National Migration Institute (INM) reported.

“The INM works to maintain and provide prompt, quality and warm care, with full respect for the human rights of people in the context of mobility,” the agency said in a statement.

During the busiest hours on Tuesday, checkpoints at the Cancun airport processed nearly 9,000 tourists who arrived on dozens of flights.

Mexico has not recovered the levels of tourism it enjoyed before the pandemic. The total number of visitors who arrived at the Cancun airport, one of the busiest in the country, was about 1.3 million during the month of January, 54.7% less than in the same month of 2020, when almost 2.3 million passengers came to the town.

But Mexico is one of the few nations in Latin America, and in the world, that has practically no restrictions on tourism due to the pandemic, and does not require diagnostic tests or isolation upon entering the country.

Passengers bound for Mexico only need to answer a questionnaire on the risk factors for a possible COVID-19 infection and their contact information.

International arrivals to Cancun were the most affected during January. However, the arrivals of national tourists were reduced by only 18%.

Flights from the United States declined sharply last spring as the pandemic took hold, but returned to near-normal levels during the Christmas holidays.

In December, Quintana Roo, the state where Cancun is located, averaged 460 arrivals and departures a day, compared to an average of 500 flights before the pandemic. Tourism represents 87% of Quintana Roo’s gross domestic product.