MEXICO CITY – Even as other nations institute airport testing, tracing, and mandatory isolation, Mexican authorities bragged about the speed with which they let tourists exit the terminal at the resort of Cancun.
Mexico’s Nationwide Immigration Institute, the INM, stated Wednesday that it took tourists an average of only one to two minutes to enter the nation.
“The INM is working to maintain and offer rapid service, with quality and warmth,” the institute stated.
During peak hours Tuesday, checkpoints at the Cancun airport processed almost 9,000 tourists arriving on dozens of flights.
Mexico has not recovered the level of tourism it had before the pandemic; the overall numbers of tourists arriving at the Cancun airport, one of Mexico’s busiest, was about 1.3 million in January, a 54.7% lower than the same month of 2020 when nearly 2.3 million passengers landed there.
However Mexico is one of the few nations in Latin America, and the world, to have instituted almost no measures to restrict travelers, require mandatory testing, or order isolation upon arrival.
Passengers bound for Mexico simply have to fill out a form asking about their risk factors for COVID-19 and their contact details.
International arrivals in Cancun took the biggest hit in January, but domestic arrivals of people boarding flights within Mexico to Cancun were down only about 18%.
Flights from the U.S. dried up last spring as the pandemic took hold but returned to near-normal during the vacation season. In December, Quintana Roo, the state that includes Cancun, was averaging 460 air arrivals and departures a day in contrast with an average of 500 before the pandemic. Tourism accounts for 87% of Quintana Roo’s gross domestic product.
