Ever since my family moved into our house in Phoenix six years ago, my dad has been wanting to paint on the flat roof messages to people in airplanes who fly over our house. What exactly he wants to write on the roof sometimes fluxuates depending on what's going on in the world; it can range anywhere from "United We Stand" (right after 9/11) to "Down with the B.C.S." (generally every year from when the B.C.S. bowl announcements come out until the games are played). However, the one phrase that he keeps coming back to is "Spend Your Money Here."
While not the most eloquent welcome message to potential Arizona tourists, my dad's blunt message gets the point across for which so many visitor centers aim. The Metropolitan Tucson Convention & Visitors Bureau has taken the general idea and molded it into an invitation to come and see all that Tucson has to offer.
According to the Bureau's website, over 22 million travelers cross the border to visit Tucson and of the $1 billion spent in Arizona annually, they estimate that Mexican visitors create $360 million in economic impact in the Tucson Metro area. (Photo at right: some Mexican tourists.)The Bureau has wised up to the spending power of Mexican tourists--and wised up to the statistic that just over 30% of Mexican visitors spend their money in Tucson--and have made efforts to attract more visitors from Meciso and to make their visit to Tucson easy and pain-free.
On their website, they offer a special section for Mexican tourists. Generally speaking, the only difference between this pge and the other page is that the one geared toward Mexican visitors is written in Spanish (though some of the accommadation information is still in English), including the descriptions of various Tucson attractions. The section also includes specific information about how to get to Tucson from Mexico and the distance from Tucson to large Mexican cities and other U.S. border towns.However, perhaps the biggest indication that the Visitor Bureau is trying to get people to Tucson is that they opened up a visitor center branch in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico.
Mexican tourists have a lot of spending power in Tucson, enough to really affect our economy. So next time you're sitting, watching the new "Grey's Anatomy" and a commercial for visiting Sonora, Mexico starts, before you start to groan about how immigrants are sending enough of our money over the border, so U.S. citizens shouldn't be expected to go down there and spend even more, realize that chances are some Sonora citizen is having her telenovela interrupted so she can hear even more about getting over the border and into Tucson.
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For more statistics on Mexican people visitng Tucson, check out http://www.visittucson.org/static/index.cfm?contentID=765&Reset=0#mexico
The first picture is courtesy of http://www.solucionesamericas.com/
The second picture, of the Mexican tourists in Tucson (really!), is at http://www.cuc.udg.mx/eventos2003/Mayo/visita-anual-tuxon-17may/index.html
The third picture is a print screen of the Tucson tourism website for people from Mexico: http://www.visittucson.org/static/index.cfm?contentID=5&Reset=0
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