The COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us about the essential value of the tourism dollar.
The tourism dollar doesn’t just benefit businesses like hotels and restaurants. Visitor spending boosts local agriculture, industrial services, wholesale trade and other businesses that serve a vital role in New Mexico’s economy.
And New Mexicans understand the importance of the tourism dollar as well. According to a 2020 survey of New Mexico residents about their sentiment and perceptions of tourism, 96% of residents realize the importance of visitor spending for the economy, and 89% of residents said they understand that tourism provides jobs for the community.
Bike trail near Gallup (Courtesy of New Mexico Tourism Department)
February 2, 2021
(Press Staff Photo by Kendra Milligan)
Simon Sotelo with New Mexico Wild leads a hike last year on the West Fork of the Gila River in the Gila National Forest.
The New Mexico Tourism Department released a data dashboard last week to help New Mexicans understand the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the state’s tourism industry on the county level, while making the prediction that, without state intervention, the state’s tourism economy would take up to seven years to recover.
※The numbers in this data dashboard and the findings from the Tourism Injury Index demonstrate how imperative it is that we invest in tourism recovery that supports every part of our state right now,” state Tourism Department Cabinet Secretary Jen Paul Schroer said in a press release.
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For most of 2020, New Mexico True advertising content was more about staying away from the state than visiting it.
As COVID-19 wrought its ugly course, and state officials clamped down with restrictive health orders that remain a long way from changing, the state’s tourism department didn’t just languish, it imploded.
Always a popular destination, White Sands should be seeing a rise in tourism activity once the state re-opens.
Estimates show 20% of the 100,000 leisure and hospitality workers in New Mexico are unemployed, said tourism secretary Jen Paul Schroer.
But with vaccines slowly making inroads here and across the country, it is time that the state’s tourism department begins planning for the inevitable bust out when people are once again free to roam the country.
NMTD: Partnership Helps Save 830 Tourism Jobs In 2020
NMTD News:
SANTA FE A partnership between the New Mexico Tourism Department (NMTD) and the New Mexico Small Business Development Center to offer business counseling services to tourism-related small businesses helped save 830 tourism jobs and secure more than $27 million in equity investments in 2020.
Since the launch of this partnership, tourism business counselors have conducted 11,290 documented contacts to tourism-related small businesses and provided 2,300 hours of direct business counseling to business owners.
The tourism business counseling program provided direct counseling assistance to 655 tourism-related small businesses in New Mexico. Of those tourism-related small businesses that received counseling assistance, 43 percent were minority-owned businesses, 25 percent were women-owned businesses and 24 percent were veteran-owned businesses.