Mexicans are forsaking visits to the United States, many in favour of Canada where their money goes further and visa requirements have been scrapped, according to the latest data from ForwardKeys, which predicts future travel patterns by analysing 16 million booking transactions a day.
While US President Trump has talked about building a wall on the Mexican border, Canada has been enjoying a boom in visitors.
The timing of their visa waiver – falling around the time of the US election – appears to have been particularly apposite.
According to ForwardKeys, starting Mar 2016 there was a 16% increase in travel in the period up to the US presidential election. When visa-free travel came into effect on December 1 2016, there followed an 82% increase compared to the preceding year.
Before November’s US election, bookings from Mexico to the US were down 9%. After the US presidential election, the decline persisted in the face of an increasing fall in the value of the US dollar (USD) against the Mexican peso (MXN). The setback was not uniform however, as there was over 3% growth in business travel to the USA, most notably to Detroit.
Olivier Jager, CEO ForwardKeys, said: “Attributing the fall in Mexican visitors to the USA to Donald Trump’s rhetoric is not proven. Currency concerns are much more likely explanation, combined with the recent relative relaxation of entry restrictions to Canada.”
About ForwardKeys
ForwardKeys predicts future travel patterns by crunching and analysing 16m booking transactions a day. It is used by travel marketers, retailers, hotels, destination marketing organisations (DMOs), financial institutions, car rental companies, tour operators, online travel agents (OTAs), and other traveller-focussed businesses worldwide to monitor and anticipate traveller arrivals and stay ahead of the trends from a particular origin market at a specific time. The analysis enables them to anticipate the impact of events, better manage their staffing levels, fine tune supply requirements, adjust and measure the effectiveness of their marketing efforts and predict future market trends. ForwardKeys’ data is retrieved daily from all the major global reservation systems worldwide.
