Increase in U.S. travel to Mexico; VisitMexico.com partners with Travelocity

Are U.S. travelers skipping Europe these days for cheaper destinations closer to home, such as  Mexico? Yes, according to reports by Travelocity, which stated that bookings to Mexico by U.S. travelers has increased 31.4% this summer from summer 2007, while travel to Western Europe declined by 14.5%.

The Mexico Tourism Board is banking on that trend continuing. It has partnered with Travelocity to bolster its site, VisitMexico.com, with a new booking engine. Now consumers here can look for, and book, flights, hotels, car rentals and vacation packages.

VisitMexico.com is a good-looking website, offering a lot of destination-specific information, with more specialized categories such as eco-tourism and scuba diving. Its Activities section is a good place to brainstorm about what kind of vacation you’d most enjoy, offering suggested sites for such activities as mountain climbing and archaeology.

But why would you book through VisitMexico instead of your regular, go-to international booking engine – say, Expedia, Orbitz or even Travelocity? I e-mailed the press contact at the Mexico Tourism Board to ask, but did not receive a response to my question by time of posting.

My guess is that they’re hoping you’ll enjoy the information-packed site so much that you’ll stick around a while and make it your one-stop shop. I could be persuaded. After all, in today’s dizzying, options-overloaded Web atmosphere, sometimes it’s nice to hang around in one place a while, especially if it’s in a virtual Mexico.

– Susan Derby, Special to the Los Angeles Times

[Photo: Guanajuato; John Muncie / For the Los Angeles Times]

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 21, 2008 at 3:18 pm by Susan Derby and is filed under Mexico, News, Tips & Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.