| | |  Travel & Outdoors | May 2009 
Tourist Season Feared 'Lost' to Flu
 Bloomberg/AP
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| | Mexico's Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova talks during an interview with Reuters at the Ministry of Health's headquarters in Mexico City May 13, 2009. Mexico's influenza A (H1N1) flu outbreak is infecting fewer people and will likely cause no more than 100 deaths in the country, Cordova said on Wednesday. (Reuters/Daniel Aguilar) | |
Tourism Secretary Rodolfo Elizondo said the country risks losing billions of dollars and thousands of jobs if U.S. health officials don't lift a travel warning before the summer holiday season.
Elizondo said his government should pressure the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, to lift a travel warning for Mexico before the end of June to help attract foreign tourists.
"If not, we can forget about summer," Elizondo said in an interview in Mexico City on Thursday. "We're very close to summer."
Foreign tourism revenue this year may decline by as much as $4.5 billion in 2009 from $13.3 billion last year, Elizondo said, as people shun Mexico on concern over a swine flu epidemic that the government announced on April 23.
Mexico has recorded 2,656 cases of swine flu, including 64 confirmed deaths, the Health Secretariat reported on Thursday morning.
The CDC has posted a warning to avoid "nonessential" travel to Mexico because of the A/H1N1 virus.
Elizondo said his secretariat has $100 million to promote tourism this year in Mexico and abroad, and will hold off on beginning the campaign outside the country until the travel warnings are lifted.
A campaign to promote domestic tourism, which makes up about 85 percent of the $75 billion spent on tourism in Mexico each year, will begin next week, he said.
Foreign Relations Secretary Patricia Espinosa also did some campaigning for the tourism industry while in Europe.
"It has been a very unpleasant event, but the country's still there. We've got our hotels, we've got our infrastructure, we're ready and waiting to receive tourists and to receive investors and investments," she said.
Espinosa praised Peru's decision to lift a ban of flights to North American nations and, later Thursday, Argentina announced it will allow airlines to resume direct flights from Mexico starting Friday after canceling them last month.
Espinosa is in Prague where she and other Latin American officials met with EU officials. The EU is Mexico's No. 2 trading partner after the United States.
Last year, trade between the EU and Mexico was worth $59.6 billion - a 222 percent rise since the two sides signed a trade agreement in 2000. |
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