More travellers heading to Mexico

Mexico's tourism ministry has published figures showing an increase in visitor numbers, with air arrivals up 5% year-on-year in the first five months of 2012.

Between January and May this year, around 4.9 million tourists arrived in the country, the latest industry data showed.

Of those, the majority of arrivals - 2.6 million - were from the United States, a 1.2% increase compared with the same period in 2011.

There was also an increase in visitors heading to Mexico from the UK, with year-on-year numbers up 6.9%, as well as from other major markets including Brazil, China, Australia, France and Germany.

The rise is visitor numbers also saw hotel occupancy rates increase by 6.3% in the first five months of the year. Destinations such as the Riviera Maya, Cancun and Puerto Vallarta were the most popular among tourists.

A Tourism ministry statement praised the efforts of all those working in the industry for raising the profile of the country as a tourist destination.

It said: "This is testament to the success of Mexico's tourism diversification strategy designed to aggressively market Mexico's myriad of tourism products to a broad range of global travellers."