With this trend, a recovery streak is broken after the collapse in demand from the covid-19 pandemic, with a year-on-year monthly growth that had been practically maintained since March 2021.
As a result of an agreement that came into force in 2004, Brazilians visiting Mexico did not need a visa, since it was enough to register in the Electronic Authorization System (SAE) to enter.
The decision was made due to the “increase in irregular flows since, unfortunately, criminal groups profit, based on deception, from the interest of Brazilian nationals to migrate irregularly to the United States through Mexico,” said the secretariats of Government (Segob) and Foreign Relations (SRE) in a joint statement.
The requirement also had an impact on Brazil’s participation in Mexican international tourism, since for at least a decade it had remained among the top 10 emitters.
“In the largest holiday period in the southern hemisphere, the Brazilian market does not appear in the top ten in January for the first time. This decrease is surely related to the change in the Mexican visa issuance policy for this market,” said the Anáhuac Center for Tourism Research and Competitiveness (Cicotur) in an analysis of the flows of January 2023.
The fall in the arrival of Brazilians coincides with a downward adjustment in the performance of some operational indicators of the airlines.
The air market between Brazil and Mexico – which is distributed between Aeroméxico, the Brazilian GOL and LATAM Airlines – had 15.2% fewer flights last January compared to the same period in 2022.
The passenger trend broke its upward trend since last August, and practically remained with a fall until December. In parallel, the load factor – which measures the seats occupied on flights – plummeted more than 10 percentage points to 62.4% in December, although it rebounded to 72.4% in January, according to data from the Federal Civil Aviation Agency ( AFAC).
