Mexico one of the top tourist destinations in 2015

To celebrate World Tourism Day, Mexico's National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) released interesting facts on Mexico's tourism sector.

According to the UN's World Tourism Organization, Mexico placed second in 2015 in all of the Americas, behind the United States, and ahead of Canada and Brazil, which placed third and fourth, respectively.

Worldwide, Mexico is placed ninth.

As part of an effort to generate better and more in-depth information on progress made in the tourism sector in Mexico, the INEGI launched the Quarterly Tourism Industry Statistics report in 2011.

In Q1 2016, tourism activity increased by 4.1% compared to the same period in 2015. And with regard to internal tourism consumption, this sector increased by 6.5% compared to the same period in 2015 according to the report's figures.

Interestingly, internal tourism represents 87.9% of the entire tourism sector in Mexico.

The tourism sector contributed to 8.6% of Mexico's total GDP in 2014 thanks in part to services such as transportation, restaurants, bars, nightlife establishments. In other words, 84.5% of the tourism sector is related to services, while only 15.5% corresponds to the sale of goods.

Furthermore, the tourism sector provided 2.3 million manufacturing and tourism service-related jobs in 2014, which accounted for 5.8% of all jobs in Mexico. Restaurants, bars and nightlife establishments accounted for 36% of the tourism sector, followed by transportation services with 16.2%, tourism commerce with 10.6%, manufacturing of arts and crafts with 9.6%, hotel services with 6.2%, and the remaining 21.4% corresponds to sundry services.

Mexico has been chosen twice to host of the World Tourism Day commemoration events, once in 1998 and again in 2014.