The tourism boom across multiple cities in Mexico has been boosting revenues of a wide range of industries as football fans keep flocking into the country for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, according to Mexican tourism authorities.
Tourism activities related to the World Cup in Mexico rose by five percent and hotel occupancy across three host cities, namely Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey, hit 95 percent on match days, according to the Mexican Secretariat of Tourism.
In Mexico City, football fans' parades have been held in the landmark Paseo de la Reforma (Promenade of the Reform).
The restaurants along the avenue are seeing large inflows of customers coming to watch the live matches.
"I can see that tourists are coming to the three host cities in Mexico in increasing numbers during the World Cup, specially foreign tourists," said Saul Rodriguez, a restaurant waiter.
The secretariat also said that at the opening day of the World Cup, the designated plazas in the host cities received about 400,000 football fans.
"The prices for the stadiums are so unbelievable. So unbelievable that we better to stay here. Look the game here with fans, with many people from all over the world, from Mexico. It's wonderful," said Wolfgang, a German football fan.
"The Mexicans receive us with kindness and warmth and the organization they have for the World Cup is excellent," said John Corrales, a football fan from Colombia.
Mexican authorities estimate that the country will welcome 10 million international arrivals in June, with activities related to the World Cup to generate more than 1.8 billion Mexican pesos (over 10 million U.S. dollars) in economic benefits.
Mexico tourism booms as fans flock in for World Cup
Chinese stock markets dropped on Monday, as AI and tech stocks continued to see-saw, according to China Global Television Network (CGTN) market analyst Timothy Pope.
The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index closed down 0.59 percent at 3,882.01 points, with the Shenzhen Component Index, which has more exposure to the tech sector, closing 2.13 percent lower at 13,794.29 points.
Trading volumes on the two indices rose with around 2.01 trillion yuan (about 296.28 billion U.S. dollars) traded on Monday, up from 1.88 trillion yuan (about 280 billion U.S. dollars) last Friday.
Traditional sectors such as precious metals, coal mining, and insurance led the gains, while bio-tech stocks were among the top decliners.
The ChiNext Index, tracking China's Nasdaq-style board of growth enterprises, lost 3.21 percent to close at 3,431.89 points on Monday.
The STAR Composite Index, which tracks the performance of stocks on China's sci-tech innovation board, closed 3.10 percent lower on Monday at 1,896.16 points.
"The A-share markets seem locked in this cycle of rally and rout for those growth stocks, particularly in the AI and adjacent sectors. Today was very much on the rout side so, while the Shanghai Composite Index was down 0.6 percent, we saw the Shenzhen Component down more than 2 percent, the ChiNext board was down 3.2 percent and the STAR 50 down 3.1 percent. Those last three are more exposed to the tech rally than the Shanghai Composite. The big losers as I said were AI hardware companies - Shenzhen Gongjin Electronics was down 10 percent, Zhongji Innolight fell more than 7 percent. But they weren't alone because the other big winning sector of the last few weeks - biotech - was in retreat today as well. Investors were rotating into gold and coal stocks as well, and agricultural stocks extended the food security trade rally that we saw at the end of last week. There were a number of stocks across those sectors, all of those were hitting the upper limits of trade today," said Pope.
Pope said the rest of the week will be dominated by earnings reports from some of China’s biggest companies.
"The rest of the week is going to be mostly about earnings. The end-of-August filing deadline is fast approaching. Friday will be a really big day on the earnings calendar. We've got BYD, PetroChina, Shenhua Energy and a lot of big banks as well. Earnings that we are going to see for ICBC, China Merchants Bank and others will give us an insight into how much pressure the big banks are under with their margins. BYD is also going to be an interesting one in light of the government's anti-involution campaign and its efforts to avert a bit of a race to the bottom in the EV sector. And before we get there, there are Nvidia results in the US on Wednesday which will doubtless impact every stock in the AI space," he said.
Chinese stock markets start week lower on AI volatility: analyst
