Mexico Tourism Board Plans $25 Million Ad Campaign

Mexico Tourism Board Plans $25 Million Ad Campaign
By Theresa Norton Masek

The Mexico Tourism Board is launching a $25 million campaign designed to overcome Americans’ perception that the country is an unsafe vacation destination. Rodolfo Lopez Negrete, COO of the Mexico Tourism Board, said international visitation to Mexico is on the rise from every country except the U.S., its “mother market,” where it has fallen 6.5 percent.

He blamed the drop on a fear about crime but also the troubled U.S. economy. “This is something we have to reverse,” Lopez Negrete told invited travel agents and industry executives at the Apple Vacations Golden Apple function held Sept. 13 near Chicago. “We are safe in the major destinations where you send your business.”

The major campaign, which will run through the end of this year, includes TV advertising highlighting aspects of Mexico’s tourism industry, including its 4,000 archeological sites, 37 World Heritage Sites, 14 AAA Five-Diamond hotels and 623,000 hotel rooms. Some ads show lesser-known vacation activities, such as diving with whale sharks and snorkeling in an underwater museum in Cancun. The tagline for these ads is “Mexico. The Place You Thought You Knew.”

Another part of the ad campaign will be testimonials shot in a style similar to the TV show “Taxicab Confessions.” Visitors will be given a transfer home and discuss their Mexican vacation in an off-the-cuff way that lends “credibility” to what they’re saying, Lopez Negrete said.

The Mexico Tourism Board also plans to work off of the Mayans’ purported date for the end of the world—Dec. 21, 2012. Calling it “The Countdown That Will Make History,” the campaign will call it the “beginning of a new era,” rather than the end of the world. The Mayan World, or Mundo Maya, campaign instead promotes 10 archeological sites in Mexico.