Mexico City, Jul 4 (EFE).- Mexico registered the arrival of 5.2 million international visitors by air in the first five months of 2013, an increase of 7.5 percent over the same period last year, the Tourism Secretariat announced on Thursday.
The United States remained the main tourist market for Mexico, providing 2.8 million visitors in the first five months of the year, a figure 7.2 percent above that registered during the same period in 2012.
During the same time span, 944,000 tourists arrived from Canada, 154,000 from Britain, 129,000 from Argentina and 113,000 from Brazil.
Just in May, 880,000 international visitors arrived by air, a 14 percent increase from the same month in 2012.
Tourism generates about 9 percent of Mexico's gross domestic product, is the country's third leading source of hard currency after oil exports and remittances and employs 2.5 million people.
Last year, Mexico welcomed 23 million international tourists and took in more than $11 billion in revenues from tourism.