Record number of people take in N.M.’s enchantment
Travelers looking for cultural authenticity and the great outdoors continue to boost tourism in New Mexico, the state’s chief promoter said Wednesday while releasing data showing the state is seeing tourism travel growth that is twice the national average.
“The numbers speak for themselves,” said Tourism Secretary Rebecca Latham. “There’s more trips to New Mexico than ever before.”
Annual data compiled by Longwoods International, a marketing, advertising and opinion research company, has shown steady gains in New Mexico and nationally since the end of the Great Recession.
Total U.S. travel growth from 2015-16 was 1.6 percent, according to Longwoods, while New Mexico’s total grew 3 percent.
Specifically, visits in New Mexico reached 34.4 million in 2016, up 3 percent over the prior year or an additional 1 million visits. Since 2010, the number of visits increased 15 percent.
The number of visits is not the same as individual travelers because one person can make more than a single trip in a given year — especially those who already live here and take day trips within the state. The number of day-trip visits, defined as 50 miles or more, reached 19.2 million, up almost 5 percent from 2015.
Overnight visits totaled 15.2 million in the state, up o.6 percent on the year. Since 2010, overnight visits have climbed almost 11 percent.
“A record number of people are visiting New Mexico,” said Gov. Susana Martinez, who joined Latham on Wednesday in Albuquerque at the Anderson Abruzzo International Balloon Museum. “And that means more money being spent in our communities. It creates jobs.”
The annual travel data sometime produce mixed news for the state. In 2015, Longwoods reported a decline in visits by state residents to other places within New Mexico. That was not the case in 2016. “We grew trips in-state, too,” Latham said. “New Mexicans are traveling in New Mexico more.”
In fact, 2016 showed the largest increase in tourism visits since the launch of the New Mexico True
marketing campaign in 2012. “We increased trips by 1 million in one year,” Latham said.
Some of that growth probably has to do with the Meow Wolf interactive arts project that opened in Santa Fe in March of 2016. The immersive exhibit inside a former bowling alley drew half a million visitors in its first 12 months, with the majority of visits coming from New Mexico residents.
Martinez herself called the exhibit “an awesome place to visit” and cited it as one of the attractions for tourists.
Top states for inbound visits to New Mexico continue to be Texas, California and Arizona. For that reason, lower gasoline prices should help the tourism industry this summer, Latham said.
One area that saw a slight drop in 2016 was in the category of visits by friends and family members. But 86 percent of all overnight trips to the state were repeat visits to New Mexico, up from 81 percent in 2015.
Latham said the state is even seeing a boost in day trips from those not staying overnight in New Mexico but who go out of their way to see a part of New Mexico such as Roswell or Carlsbad Caverns.
Of special note in the report, Latham said, is that the number of overnight trips by those who had heard or read something about the state grew 2.6 percent in 2016, up 49 percent since 2010. That’s the market most influenced by promotional and marketing under New Mexico True, she said.
The top reasons that overnight visitors come to the state include sightseeing and the outdoors. Twenty-two percent of visitors reported going to a state or national park, another 22 percent went to a landmark or historic site, 18 percent visited a museum and 12 percent went to an art gallery.
If there are headwinds to further growth, they might be coming from President Donald Trump, who signed an executive order for his administration to study the removal of national monument designations at 27 sites, including the Rio Grande del Norte, designated in 2014, and Organ Mountains-Desert Peak National Monument, designated in 2013.
New Mexico’s U.S. senators and State Auditor Tim Keller are urging U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to keep the designations intact. In a letter to Zinke, Keller cited the tourism draw of the sites as one reason almost 3 million people visited recreational Bureau of Land Management property in New Mexico in 2015.
“The positive effects of national monuments are even more dramatic in contrast to the stagnation of the rest of the state’s economy,” Keller wrote Zinke on June 30.
Martinez said Wednesday she hopes people will continue to visit the sites regardless of how the land is designated.
“Whether they’re declared a monument or not, they will always be here for people to enjoy,” Martinez said.