CDMX | Officials in Mexico have asked the United States to ease its travel advisories to Mexico warning citizens of crime and kidnappings and making them more specific about where crimes are being committed in relation to tourist areas.
In a press release last week, Mexico’s tourism ministry said it has urged the United States to tweak its travel warnings to several Mexican states in order to “detail the areas that could represent problems and not generalize, as some isolated cases of insecurity are numerous kilometers from tourism destinations.”
Currently, the United States has posted advisories for citizens not to travel to the Mexican states of Colima, Guerrero, Michoacan, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas, and Zacatecas due to crime and kidnapping concerns. The state of Guerrero is home to the popular tourist city of Acapulco.
In addition, the State Department has told Americans to “reconsider” travel to seven other states, including Baja California, which is home to the well-known resort town of Cabo San Lucas.
The press release suggested that the United States is open to tweaking the guidance, citing Angela Kerwin, secretary of consular affairs of the U.S. State Department, saying during a meeting that “timely information is the key to boosting tourism from the neighboring nation to Mexico, and in this way, tourists and U.S. residents know in a timely manner the condition of the destination they visit or where they reside.”
The press release stated that in 2021, the arrival of American tourists by air “represented 72.7% of the total arrivals in our country.”
Earlier this year, Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard said the country “never agreed with the alerts” because they are made solely by the United States.