New York City is making a push to court Mexican travellers, with its tourism agency preparing to spend millions of dollars promoting New York as part of a growing effort to lure Latin American visitors, officials announced Tuesday.

After the estimated number of Mexicans visiting the city nearly doubled in six years, tourism arm NYC & Company is ramping up its presence in Mexico City, part of its series of far-flung tourism offices.

"We want to be visible and make sure we're top of mind" to Mexican travellers, said NYC & Co president George Fertitta.

The agency has had a representative in the Mexican capital, but the new office represents a significant boost in New York's efforts to market its attractions there.

The new office won't cater to travellers themselves.

Instead, it's meant to help forge closer relationships with Mexican tour operators, travel media, airlines and others who steer where tourists go — "to be able to have day-to-day contact," Fertitta said.

An estimated 376,000 Mexican travellers took in New York last year, up from 192,000 in 2005. While they represented a small piece of the nearly 51 million tourists last year, by NYC & Co's calculations, the agency is putting increasing focus on South and Central America.

offices across the world

NYC & Co has opened some 18 offices in countries ranging from Australia to China to Sweden in roughly the last decade. A Brazil office opened in Sao Paulo in 2007.

The number of Brazilian tourists in New York has shot up since, from an estimated 151,000 in 2006 to 718,000 last year, NYC & Co says.

Brazil was the city's No. 3 international tourist market last year, behind the United Kingdom and Canada. Mexico was number 12.

The non-profit NYC & Co gets about 40 per cent of its US$35 million-a-year operating budget from the city government; the rest comes from airlines, hotels, restaurants and other businesses.

Fertitta declined to specify how much the agency was spending on the Mexico City office, to be run by Connect Worldwide, a travel-marketing company that also operates some of New York's other tourism offices.

- AP