New Mexico's tourism industry sees all-time record

“A driving force behind tourism in Las Cruces has been the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument,” Visit Las Cruces Executive Director Rochelle Miller-Hernandez said. “In a boost to outdoor recreation, since its designation in 2014, the monument has had a cumulative economic impact of $234 million-dollar, $35 million of that was in 2022 alone. It remains a large part of our marketing and has positively impacted our local businesses and lodging.”

New Mexico set a record for direct visitor spending in 2022, reaching $8.3 billion, the New Mexico Tourism Department (NMTD) said. That is an increase of $1.1 billion compared to 2021 and exceeded the state’s all time high of $7.4 billion in 2019.

Tourism in 2022 also had a significant influence on job creation, NMTD said an estimated 70,433 jobs were sustained by visitor spending, surpassing the 2021 figures by more than 7,000 jobs.

Tourism’s total economic impact in 2022 in New Mexico was $11.2 billion, the department said. That figure includes direct visitor spending, household consumption, the supply chain and business-to-business transactions.

NMDOT said visitors spent $2.7 billion on lodging, constituting 32 percent of all visitor spending in 2022, a 13 percent increase over the previous record set in 2019.

A total of $1.9 billion was spent on food and beverage, representing 23 percent of all visitor spending in 2022, and an 11 percent increase over the previous record set in 2019. Almost half of all visitor spending occurred in rural communities.

Earlier this year, NMTD published its annual visitor volume report, which highlighted a record 40.8 million trips to New Mexico in 2022. Of those trips, 16.7 million were overnight trips. Business trips represented 9 percent of all trips in 2022, which was a total almost double that of 2021.

NMDT’s Tourism Economic Impact Report for 2022 can be viewed at www.newmexico.org.