Become a Home Based Travel Agent

Selling Mexico
By Tom Ogg

I just finished watching our local news here in San Diego while preparing to drive to Las Vegas for the upcoming Travel Weekly show. Just within the last 23-hours there was a gang shooting in East San Diego, a triple murder on Rincon Reservation in NE San Diego County, another gang shooting in Oceanside and numerous robberies and assaults. Actually, the criminal activity in San Diego is well defined geographically, as the gangs tend to be found in the poorest areas of San Diego.

With all of these murders taking place, you would think that tourists would shy away from visiting San Diego.

So why are people afraid to travel to Mexico?

Joanie and I live in Mexico for part of the year and find it to be safer and more comfortable than just about everywhere. I haven't heard about any gang activity at the Four Seasons Hotel, or the St. Regis. Actually, there hasn't ever been any gang activity in Punta Mita, or for the most part, Nayarit. So U thought that I would share the secrets to having a wonderful time in Mexico, All that your clients have to do is follow these basic rules and I guarantee they will have absolutely no problems.

1. Leave your Rolex and shiny diamonds at home.
2, Don't hang out at local bars in bad areas and try to buy drugs late at night.
3. Don't visit border cities that are affected by drug related crimes.
4. Don't walk down dark streets late at night in bad sections of the city that you are visiting.
5. Don't pick fights in bars late at night.

I think that about sums it up. Your clients will have a great time in Mexico and be rewarded with unbelievable bargains for having the courage to go to resorts that have been hurt by all of the bad publicity in the U.S..

Here are some recent articles that you may want to share with clients considering visiting Mexico. Feel free to print them out and circulate them freely.

Tourism to Mexico jumps nearly 20%
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-1008-mexico-tourism-20101008,0,2832991
 Foreign visitors arriving by air to Mexico jumped to 7.1 million in the first eight months of the year — up nearly 20% from the same period in 2009 — with most visitors coming from the U.S. and Canada, according to Mexican tourism officials.
 The biggest rise came in July, when tourist numbers grew 27.5% over the same month last year.
 In the first eight months of 2010, 7.1 million foreign travelers flew to Mexico, up 19.2% from the same period last year. Of those visitors, 4.33 million were from the U.S., 1.3 million from Canada and 200,513 from Spain, according to Mexican tourism officials.
 The latest numbers are a significant increase from 2009, when international tourism to Mexico dropped dramatically after the outbreak of the H1N1 virus, or swine flu. But compared with 2008, international travel to Mexico is up only 6%.

Virtuoso Statistics on Travel to Mexico
http://www.journeymexico.com/blog/virtuoso-statistics-on-travel-to-mexico/
 From January to August of 2010, 7.1 million foreign international travelers visited Mexico, which was a rise of 19 percent from the same period in 2009.
 In addition to having several of the top sun and beach destinations of the world, Mexico has 30,000 archeological sites, 110,000 monuments and 31 UNESCO World Heritage sites. Many places have one or maybe two of these elements, but only Mexico combines all of them in one destination.
 Continental Airlines, United Airlines and Delta Airlines have all added new flights to Mexico from several North American travel hubs. Also adding flights to Mexico in the near future are: Aeromexico, British Airways, US Airways, Frontier Airlines, Virgin America, and China’s Hainan Airlines.
 (According to the Virtuoso Luxe Report) Mexico is second only to Italy in popularity as an international luxury destination. The country offers almost 155,000 five-star hotel rooms, up 7 percent per year since 2007.

Mexico's drug war doesn't stop tourists
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39196406/ns/travel-destination_travel/
 In 2008, the country had 22.6 million visitors who spent $13.2 billion, according to the Mexico Tourist Board. In 2009, the number of total visitors declined slightly to 21.4 million, but spending dropped by $2 billion to $11.2 billion. Americans comprise the largest group of Mexico’s international tourists — about 80 percent.
 Alfonso Sumano, regional director of the Americas for the tourist board, said Mexico expects to see the number of visitors and their expenditures return to 2008 levels this year. Tourists have already spent $6.49 billion in just the first six months of 2010, he said.

Mexico’s tourism secretary debunks fears and fictions
http://www.travelweekly.com/article3_ektid224734.aspx
 Mexico is one of the top 10 tourist destinations in the world
 Mexico is a leading luxury vacation destination. "According to a recent survey conducted by Virtuoso, Mexico came up as the No. 2 country… preferred by their members,"
 "Mexico is also No. 1 in terms of spas in the world, and three out of 10 Americans report return visits within just 12 months."
 Some 22.6 million tourists, 80% of them North Americans, are expected to have visited Mexico by the end of 2010.
 As of September, inbound tourism was up 18.8% year over year compared with 2009 and 6% better than 2008. And, despite the much-publicized failure of Mexicana Airlines earlier this year, air arrivals from the U.S. were up 15% compared with 2009.
 The growth in visitors from other countries is even greater. Arrivals from Canada are up almost 22% over 2009 and 32% over 2008, with 1 million air arrivals this year. Italy is up 22%; Germany, 18%; and Brazil, 94%.
 "And the Japanese, who are very cautious travelers, are up 27%," Guevara added. "We have seen an important increase in travelers from around the world."
 Every major airline is increasing capacity to Mexico because the demand is there.
 Mexico enjoys an overall 97% repeat-visit rate and received a customer satisfaction score of 9.2 out of 10 from 26,000 international visitors polled.

Tourism to Mexico Is Up
http://intransit.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/28/tourism-to-mexico-is-up/
 The number of international tourists who flew to Mexico from January to August increased 19 percent over the same period last year, according to the board, and most were from the United States. More than four million American citizens flew to Mexico, an increase of 15 percent over the same period last year, and about 61 percent of international tourists to Mexico are Americans.

Mexico Tourism Official: Agents Big Part of Resurgence
http://www.travelagentcentral.com/mexico/mexico-tourism-official-agents-big-part-resurgence-23837
 Agents have convinced their clients that Mexico is still safe to travel to and because of that, the country has seen the number of international tourists arriving in Mexico by air increased by 27.5 percent in July, in comparison to the same month last year.
 The number of international tourists reaching Mexico by air has risen 35.2 percent in June compared to the same month last year, marking an impressive first half of the year for its tourism industry.
 In June, 818,278 tourists of different nationalities visited Mexico vs. 605,435 in the same month last year. Of those, 573,016 travelers arrived by air from the U.S., representing a 23.7 percent growth over June of last year. Even more impressive were the 41,184 arrivals from Canada—21,322 more than in June of 2009 and a whopping 107.4 percent increase.

Mexico minister celebrates top rankings for Spa, Luxury Travel and Real Estate
http://www.elitetraveler.com/news_detail.html?nid=3109&n=mexico-minister-celebrates-rankings-for-spa-luxury-travel
 Elite Traveler recognized Mexico in its July/August 101 Top Suites issue as the top international destination for the best suites in the world.
 Promoting the country's 31 World Heritage sites and 110,000 historical monuments, Guevara said she hopes her country can move from Number 10 in visitor arrivals to Number Five in the next five years.
 In a survey of 22,000 tourists last year… consumers gave Mexico a 9.2 ranking on a scale of 10 and 97 percent said they were return visitors making her top goal to get new travelers to try Mexico.

Tourism in Mexico-Can't keep them away
http://www.economist.com/node/17581852?story_id=17581852
 After an appalling 2009, in which the outbreak of swine flu emptied hotels overnight, the number of visitors this year will be close to 2008’s record total of 22.6m. Even excluding 50m annual day-trippers, Mexico remains the world’s tenth most-visited country.

Travel Safety Reputations Die Hard
Are your worries based on old assumptions, last decade’s news, or meaningless statistics?
http://www.transitionsabroad.com/listings/travel/resourceful_traveler/mexico-dangers-travel-safety-reputations-die-hard.shtml
 You often hear statistics like, ―200 Americans have been killed in Mexico since 2004,‖ or ―one American dies every week in Mexico,‖ but without any context as to what that really means. Roughly 17 million U.S. tourists visited Mexico in 2008. That’s a mighty big number. If you put that many people in one place it would be the fifth-largest state in America! In that context 50 deaths a year would make a large state’s governor pretty happy.
 The State Department maintains a list of Americans who died on foreign soil (travel.state.gov/law/family_issues/death/death_600.html), along with their causes of death. The Houston Chronicle dug a little further into the story and found that only 70 of those 200 people killed in Mexico were innocent victims of crime. Many were ―victims labeled hitmen, drug dealers, human smugglers or gang members, based on published investigators’ accusations. Others were drug users or wanted for crimes in the United States.‖
 So in other words, the incidences of an American tourist getting killed by a criminal in Mexico over that four-year period were roughly 70 people out of 58 million visitors. That equates to 1 in 842,857, or 0.0000012 percent. To put that in perspective, those odds lie somewhere between your chance of dying in an airplane crash (1 in 659,779) and being killed by flesh-eating bacteria (1 in 1,252,488).

Is Mexico safer than the USA?
http://www.marinersmexico.com/blog/2010/how-safe-is-mexico.html
 Clearly Mexico has areas that are very challenged, such as the northern state of Chihuahua, which recorded 32 deaths per 100,000 from cartel-related violence in 2009. Ciudad Juárez is located in Chihuahua. Unfortunately, the 2010 Chihuahua mid-year rate, from January–June 2010, reached 44 per 100,000 with six months remaining in the year. For perspective, the Virgin Islands’ 2007 firearms death rate was 37.6 per 100,000.
 The Mexican state of Jalisco, for instance, has a 2010 mid-year cartel–related death rate of 2.92 per 100,000 (with six months remaining in 2010). For comparison, the 2006 US death rates per hundred thousand from leading causes of death ran: 200.2 from heart disease, 180.7 from cancer, 43.6 from stroke, 23.3 from diabetes.

Safety in Mexico Improves, Mexico City Safer than Washington, D.C.
http://internationalliving.com/2010/02/12-safety-in-mexico/
 Mexico City’s 2009 homicide rate of nine per 100,000 was equal to that of Los Angeles, and it was less than a third that of Washington, D.C. which tallied more than 30 homicides per 100,000.

Seven Safer Places to Visit in Mexico
http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/mexico-violence-safer-places-tourists-visit/story?id=12070836
 Mexico remains the top tourist destination for Americans traveling outside the United States, with the number of international tourists arriving by air increasing by 18.8 percent this year compared with last year.