Travel and tourism are said to be the world's largest industry, and growing. The World Travel and Tourism Council predicts that people will be making one billion international trips annually by 2010. One billion represents only the number of international trips. Worldwide, there are four or five times as many domestic trips. In New Mexico, tourism is our second largest private industry after gas and oil.
Tourism is a growing industry in New Mexico.
The industry employs 74,200 people, up from 66,000 three years ago. Outside these tourism-related categories, gross receipts grew by only 2.9 percent during the same period. Cultural and heritage tourism are among the most popular areas of this huge travel and tourism industry. Promoting What Is Already Here Cultural tourism is especially big business in New Mexico, where history, arts and culture are so plentiful and celebrated. Five of the top seven reasons that tourists visit New Mexico are culture-related.