excerpted from The News, Mexico City
Tourism recovering from 2009 flu blow
Jueves, 17 de Diciembre de 2009
Reuters
MEXICO CITY The nation is facing a $1.6 billion drop in tourism revenues for 2009, thanks to a deadly flu outbreak, but the fall is smaller than first feared and visitors should return in 2010, the government said on Monday.
Tourism is Mexico’s No. 4 source of foreign currency after oil exports, migrant remittances and foreign direct investment, and visitors spent $13.3 billion in 2008 visiting its sandy beaches, colonial towns and archeological vestiges.
But this year the H1N1 flu epidemic combined with soaring drug gang killings and a global economic slowdown to create a toxic cocktail that lightened Mexico-bound flights and caused big losses in the hospitality industry.
“We’ve never had what we had this year,” Tourism Minister Rodolfo Elizondo told a news conference. “The economic fall, influenza, the drug trafficking issue … factors that combined to create a difficult year.”
Dropped in on an IMSS clinic. They were giving innoculations for H1N1, they gave me one, and then remarked that ANYONE can drop in when they were vacinating, get a flu shot. The service is absolutely without fee, or encumberance except they will ask for a name and an address (Mexico, USA, Egypt, Mars).