by Mia Taylor
Last updated: 12:50 AM ET, Tue November 27, 2018
The Tourism Council of Mexico is about to be dissolved as part of changes being made to the way the country promotes tourism under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's new administration.
According to Riviera Maya News, the council (also known as Consejo de Promoción Turística de México or CPTM) is to be phased out and its responsibilities turned over to Mexico's global embassies.
Luis Alegre Salazar, president of the Tourism Commission in the Chamber of Deputies told the publication that there will still be resources for the promotion of Mexico's tourism industry, despite the decision to eliminate the council. Those resources will now be provided by the country's federal budget, he said.
Previously, Alegre Salazar explained, tourism promotion funding came from fees international tourists pay upon entering Mexico via air travel. Those fees generate about 8 billion pesos a year, and 10 percent of that income stream was used for the National Fund for Tourism Promotion.
About 20 percent of the income from fees went to the National Institute of Migration, and the remaining 70 percent was used by El Consejo de Promoción Turística de México (CPTM).
Altogether, according to Alegre Salazar, about five billion pesos annually was used for promotion spending, including paying for various tourism council offices around the globe.
"Basically the offices of the CPTM abroad, whose functions will now go to the embassies, had been carrying out a work of market intelligence, that is to say, they were reporting the situation of the different markets in order to offer the hiring tools for tourism promotion specific to each country," he explained.
As part of the new approach, tourism promotion programs and investments will be subdivided, and there will no longer be a specialized body spearheading that work.
"The promotion of the country will continue, but with a more efficient spending, taking advantage of the embassies of Mexico around the world," he noted.
Alegre Salazar said the change is part of the reorganization taking place under the new presidential administration.
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