The arrival of European travelers in Mexico will double over the next five years to round out a million sunbathers from the Old World in 2010, a group of French professionals revealed this week. Cesar Balderacchi, president of the mighty French Trade Union of Travel Agents (SNAV is the French acronym), warned that growth could be even bigger if international airlines make more flights to Mexico.

The United States, Great Britain, Germany and Italy are by far the world’s top four cruise passenger providers with 13 million sea vacationers combined during the course of 2004 alone. That figure, experts believe, will keep on growing at a whopping 20 percent increment into the year 2010. According to stats provided by Crucemar, a maritime company, a grand total of 9.2 million Americans took to the seven seas last year, way ahead of the one million Britons, 450,000 Germans and 325,000 Italians that hopped on cruise liners in that same span of time.

The World Tourism Organization (WTO) is pointing at the expansion of low-cost air carriers as one of the key factors that could keep the world travel industry on the rise in the five continents all through 2005. The implementation of low-cost airlines is definitely pushing leisure travel ahead, a segment that WTO experts believe is the powerhouse of the world vacation industry. Business travel, on the other hand, will continue rebounding in coming months.

It may take another two years for business travel in the US to rebound, according to the 2004 Business and Convention Travelers Report, the first study to examine corporate travel compiled jointly by the Travel Industry Association (TIA) and the National Business Travel Association (NBTA). Suzanne Cook, TIA´s senior vice president of research, indicated that between 1998 and 2003, US domestic business and convention travel declined more than 14 percent. The good news is that there are signs of recovery in 2004.

Mexico is penciled in as a highly safe and reliable country for tourists, a reason why the flow of incoming travelers –including American citizens- must remain on the rise all through 2005. Oralia Rice Sosa, undersecretary of Tourism Planning, said a recent poll taken among visitors shows the country is seen as a safe destination with hospitable people, with the sole exception of Mexico City, a deeply troubled area right now.