Study: Mexican visitors spend $1 billion in region

Inside Tucson Business

In spite of security measures that have made it more difficult to cross the border and some volatility in peso valuation, visitors from Mexico continue to come to Arizona and spend money — nearly $1 billion a year in the Tucson region — according to an extensive study done by the University of Arizona’s Economic and Business Research Center in the Eller College of Management.

The amount of money visitors from Mexico are spending in the area is up nearly 3.5 times the $280.3 million that a previous study calculated in 2001, the last time similar research was conducted.

Even when considering the impacts of inflation, spending by Mexicans in Arizona is up 150 percent, said Vera Pavlakovich-Kochi, senior regional scientist, who co-wrote the study with Albert H. Charney, senior research economist.

A major contributor to the increased spending, especially in the Tucson area, is that 87 percent of the more than 2.7 million annual visitors from Mexico are staying at least one night and on average spend 2.5 nights.

Some of that is attributed to newer border crossing requirements that make a day-trip to Tucson more difficult.

But there have also been some specific marketing targets, says Felipe Garcia, vice president of Mexico marketing for the Metropolitan Tucson Convention and Visitors Bureau (MTCVB). Promotions of concert and other nighttime events encourages visitors from Mexico to come to Tucson and spend the night.

Garcia said the MTCVB through its office in Hermosillo and through the mail has facilitated a system allowing consumers to use their Mexican-issued credit cards for advance purchase of tickets to events in the Tucson area and have them delivered to them before they leave their homes.

The study, which was done from July 1, 2007, to June 30, 2008, was posted on the Arizona Office of Tourism Web site this month. The previous study was done during 2001 and was skewed by the 9/11 events that year.

While data gathering for this latest study was finished before the biggest outward signs of the economic recession took place late last year, both Pavlakovich-Kochi and Garcia said there are indicators that tourism from Mexicans to this region is holding up better than the tourism market in general.

Pavlakovich-Kochi said whenever there is volatility in the value of the peso, people will react accordingly but not generally with long-term effects. She said when it appears it may be devalued, there is a tendency on the part of Mexicans to hurry to make purchases before it drops and then wait a few weeks to make certain it stabilizes before buying again.

Garcia said the MTCVB saw evidence of that earlier this year when hotel registrations they were tracking through their Hermosillo office fell off during January and February but recently have begun to rebound.

“This current economic crisis may be global but in Mexico, the attitude is ‘we have seen this before’,” Garcia said. “My grandmother used to have an expression ‘just put more water on the beans.’ It was her way of saying that when more people showed up for dinner make what we have work. I think that’s the attitude in Mexico, we’ll make what we have work.”

Contact reporter David Hatfield at dhatfield@azbiz.com or (520) 295-4237.