Mexico City, Mexico According to the Tourism Secretariat, Mexico registered a record hotel occupancy of 185,550 reserved rooms during the January through April period this year, up 7.6 percent from the same period in 2011.

The secretariat reported that the 70 leading destinations in the country all posted positive numbers, exceeding the figures from 2008, which industry experts consider the best period for the tourism industry in recent years.

"Mexico’s tourism centers exhibited important growth, with the Riviera Maya and Puerto Vallarta posting increases of 6.3 percent and 20.1 percent, respectively, compared to 2011," the Tourism Secretariat added. "And the Comprehensively Planned Centers reported 8.1 percent growth in the number of occupied rooms."

Huatulco, on the Pacific coast in the southern state of Oaxaca, posted a 13 percent rise in the hotel occupancy rate; the Caribbean resort city of Cancun registered 10.8 percent growth; and Loreto and Los Cabos, both on the peninsula of Baja California, posted 10.5 percent and 3.4 percent growth, respectively, compared to the same months last year.

Guadalajara reported a 13.3 percent rise in hotel occupancy, while Monterrey came in at 12.5 percent and Mexico City at 10.6 percent among urban destinations.

Among the cities in the interior that posted big increases in hotel occupancy were Villahermosa, with 29.2 percent; Guanajuato, with 24.2 percent; Queretaro, with 23.8 percent; San Luis Potosi, with 16.4 percent; and Leon, also with 16.4 percent.

The 12 destinations in the Mundo Maya – Riviera Maya, Cozumel, Cancun, Isla Mujeres, Tonala, Merida, Tuxtla Gutierrez, Villahermosa, San Cristobal de las Casas, Palenque, Campeche, and Comitan de Dominguez – posted 7.6 percent growth in hotel occupancy.

The Riviera Maya will host the World Travel & Tourism Council regional summit from May 16th through the 18th, an event expected to draw more than 500 tourism industry executives from across the Americas, the secretariat said.

The hotel occupancy figures for the January 1st to April 29th period were obtained from Datatur, a data warehouse for the analysis and reporting of Spanish tourism statistics.