MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s Senate has voted to charge cruise ship passengers $42 per head for port visits, drawing sharp criticism from the tourism industry.
Mexican business chambers say the immigration tax – from which cruise passengers were previously exempt – could harm the country’s half-billion-dollar-a-year cruise industry.
The measure approved at the end of Tuesday has already been adopted by the House of Representatives and will enter into force in 2025. The changes were part of a bill that also increases immigration fees at airports and entrance fees to nature reserves.
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Located on Mexico’s Caribbean coast, Cozumel is the busiest cruise ship port of call in the world. The National Confederation of Commerce, Service and Tourism Chambers said the $42 fees could make other countries’ Caribbean ports more competitive than Mexico’s.
“This could result in a significant drop in the number of visitors,” Octavio de la Torre, the federation’s president, said on Monday.
In the past, cruise passengers were exempt from immigration fees because they slept on board the ships and some did not even step off the ship during port visits. Now, apparently, even those people would have to be charged the $42 fee under the new law.
There have been initiatives around the world to restrict cruise ships for fear of overtourism, but that train left the station long ago in the case of Mexico’s Caribbean coast. Cozumel has been the busiest port of call in the world for years, welcoming approximately four million cruise passengers per year.
Two-thirds of the money raised would go to the Mexican military, not to improve port facilities.
The Mexican Association of Shipping Agents cried foul last week.
“If this measure is implemented, Mexico’s ports of call would be among the most expensive in the world, which would seriously affect their competitiveness with other Caribbean destinations,” the association said in a statement.
Mexico’s ruling Morena party already runs huge budget deficits to finance its favored construction projects, such as railways and oil refineries – some of which are being built by the military. The government is desperate for new sources of revenue.
