Mexico presented its 2026-2030 Sustainable Tourism Policy on September 2, a national framework designed to embed sustainability criteria into tourism planning across the country’s 32 states, Mexico Business News reported.
The policy was unveiled during the 10th edition of the Sustainable & Social Tourism Summit in Mexico City, according to Mexico Business News. It is structured around five strategic pillars covering tourism governance, tourism culture, sustainable and regenerative tourism offerings, climate resilience and risk management, and financing, comprising 16 lines of action and 60 key actions with short, medium and long-term implementation timelines.
The framework aims to move sustainability beyond individual tourism projects and integrate it into state-level planning, establishing mechanisms to monitor commitments and measure results while promoting coordination between government institutions, Mexico Business News reported.
Norma Martínez, Baja California’s Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development and secretary general of the National Association of State Environmental Authorities, said the policy reflected collaborative work across the states. “The Sustainable Tourism Policy of Mexico that is being presented today is much more than an institutional document, it is the result of collaborative work,” she said, cited by Mexico Business News. She added that the framework would help ensure economic development and biodiversity conservation are pursued together rather than separately.
Martínez pointed to Baja California’s “Visitor Decalogue”, developed with the state’s Tourism Secretariat to encourage visitors to protect the destinations they travel to, as a model that could be replicated nationally, according to Mexico Business News.
The policy was developed through three workshops involving more than 500 people from all 32 states, with support from Germany’s technical cooperation agency GIZ, and validation from the National Association of State Environmental Authorities and the Mexican Association of Secretaries of Economic Development, Mexico Business News reported. The process also established a national collaboration network among state tourism secretariats and builds on the Mexican Association of Tourism Secretaries’ “Sustainable Tourism: Mexico in Motion” document, presented at FITUR 2026.
State tourism secretariats are now expected to incorporate the policy into their planning processes and document progress through 2030. “A public policy acquires value when it is implemented, measured and held accountable,” Martínez said, cited by Mexico Business News.