In 2023, half as many Russians will be able to visit Mexico as last year, bringing the number of visitors to 90.2 thousand, acknowledged Mexican Ambassador to Moscow Eduardo Villegas Mejias. An obstacle to the development of mutual tourism is rising air fares due to EU sanctions against Russian aviation, the diplomat said.
In 2022, more than 90,000 Russians visited Mexico, more than in previous years, but not a record number. The number of people arriving in 2022 has been affected by very high airfares, Mejias said. “After the pandemic, there was a recovery and some increase (tourist flow), the situation improved, (came) more tourists from Russia to Mexico. However, due to the closure of airspace in Europe, the inability to travel and fly to Mexico at normal prices, tourism has been hit hard,” the diplomat said.
In 2023, the number of Russians coming to Mexico will decrease, Mejias predicts. “This year, most likely, we will not reach (the indicator) 90,000, perhaps (the volume of tourist flow will be) only half (of last year’s tourist flow). The cost of moving has increased a lot, all transport has increased in price. Traveling from Mexico to Russia is very expensive, as well as from Russia to Mexico. The best year for Russian tourists was 2013, not even the World Cup,” the diplomat said.
“We thought that somewhere in 2022 we would reach 120-130,000 (Russians coming to the country). But because of this conflict in Ukraine, everything started to fall apart, and this year we believe that this reduction will be very serious in the tourist flow,” added Mejias.
As follows from the migration statistics of Mexico, in 2022, 90.3 thousand Russians visited the country, in the “pre-pandemic” 2019 – 84.5 thousand, in the record 2013 – 107.8 thousand.
The diplomat expressed hope that Russia would facilitate the visa process for Mexicans wishing to visit. According to Mejias, such negotiations have been going on for more than a decade, but “everything is going very slowly”. “It’s a bit more difficult (for tourists) from Mexico to get a visa to Russia (compared to getting an entry permit for Russians), you have stricter rules here in the Federation We were told that they would simplify this process a bit, but at the moment there is no alternative yet,” the ambassador explained.
Also, Mejias noted, a Russian visa is clearly issued for the duration of the trip. “It complicates the situation a bit, because the person was a little late with the departure, something else happened – you have to go, find excuses. But we hope that this (the simplification of the rules of entrance) can be arranged and everything will be settled,” he said.
At the same time, the Mexican ambassador stressed that the authorities of the country do not impose any additional restrictions on the Russians because they use it as a transit to the United States. “Mexico has neither officially nor unofficially changed its migration policy. We apply the same controls (on visitors) as before. If we talk about the entry of 90,000 Russian tourists, this is a very small number of people, we cannot pay so much attention to them, because the flow from Russia is much lower than the flow of tourists from other countries,” the diplomat said. .
Since October 2022, 33.1 thousand Russians have crossed the US border from Mexico, according to US Border Service data.
Mexican authorities have begun to deny entry to the country more often to Russians and citizens of a number of other states due to an increase in the flow of illegal migration to the United States, however, there is no there is no discrimination against Russian citizens, informed in January TASS with reference to the Russian Embassy in the Latin American country.
“Indeed, we are witnessing a slight increase in entry refusals, but such attention to tourists from Russia and the post-Soviet space is caused by an increase in the flow of illegal migrants from these countries which are using Mexico as a transit area for further entry into the United States,” the head of the consular department told the agency. Department of the Russian Embassy in Mexico Andrey Troyanovsky.
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