Enrique de la Madrid, Mexico Secretary of Tourism

Executives from the hotel, cruise, tours, retail, OTA and destination marketing sectors talk about their assumptions and plans for the year ahead. The interviews were conducted by Travel Weekly editor in chief and senior vice president Arnie Weissmann.

Enrique de la Madrid, Mexico Secretary of Tourism

I have a positive view of the world. I see a world growing in population, a world where poverty is being reduced and incomes are getting higher, where people have more capacity to trade, to buy and to travel. People are better connected, not only through traditional communications, but on bigger airplanes and more sophisticated cruise ships. We're more interconnected, and will continue to be.

In terms of tourism, since more people are traveling around the world and have more money to spend, and since Mexico is well connected and open, we are going to be taking a bigger share of the tourism market around the world every day, and that's our goal.

Tourism is important to Mexico because it is very labor-intensive, it provides a lot of jobs. Many of our less-developed, poorer regions are also among the most interesting  states like Oaxaca, like Chiapas. They haven't been able to connect to global manufacturing, but they could connect to global travel. They can open to the world through tourism.

Today, 60% of foreign visitors come from the U.S. But 10 years ago, it was 70%. I continue to see the U.S. as the most important source market, so we need to target other segments of the American public. One that we haven't worked for enough is the Hispanic market. Thirty-five million Americans of Mexican heritage live in the States, which is about the same as the total number of international visitors who come to Mexico every year.

While the U.S. will continue to be the most important market, we're also working on diversification. China has 120 million people traveling all over the world. It's one of the countries that has been able to reduce poverty the fastest, and the country that has the most millionaires. Japan is a market that probably will not grow so much in population, but they have a lot of income and they have time. In Latin America, Argentina is growing, Brazil is growing, Chile is growing.

The U.K. is another important market for Mexico, with more than half a million traveling to Mexico. France is growing well.

And we are focused on the domestic market  the wealth it creates is very impressive.

We are speaking with the U.S. State Department and local U.S. consulates in Mexico about the travel warnings currently in effect. I can absolutely convey, first, that the Mexican authorities take security concerns very seriously. The Ministry of Tourism is not necessarily responsible for security, but we're working on it because we know that it is an important factor for anyone traveling anywhere.

But, it's also a fact that, for the past two years, no foreign tourist has been killed in Mexico. That is not the case in many other places in the world.

We understand that the intention of the warnings is to provide information to Americans to stay safe. Fair enough. But we're worried they are misleading. It's difficult to sum up the reality of an area in one paragraph. If I paid attention only to crime rates in Washington, D.C., in Chicago, in Los Angeles, I wouldn't be traveling to the States. But I'm sophisticated enough to know that those things happen in specific areas. As a tourist, I know that I'm safe in the U.S.

There are also unintended consequences of the warning that affect U.S. businesses. We have thousands of hotels owned by American companies. We have American airlines doing business in Mexico. Some tour operators have 50% of their business done in Mexico. These warnings affect U.S. jobs.

The State Department said they'll be reviewing the warnings in January, but to be realistic, I don't think we have time to change the warning by then. What we can do, however, is provide enough information for tourists so they can make their own decisions.