Mexican airport officials are cracking down on imports of consumer electronics, including visitors’ personal laptops and tablets, tourists to the country say.
Reports in USA Today and Forbes detail a number of recent travel experiences where visitors arriving at Cancun International Airport have been confronted by customs agents over the number of personal electronic devices they are carrying.
More than one device could cost you
Unbeknownst to many arrivals in the Land of the Sun, Mexico operates under regulations that limit the number of portable computing devices each person can bring in. The rules are intended to prevent people bringing in goods and selling them on the black market. Just one “portable computer” is permitted per foreign arrival, and a laptop and tablet count as two devices.
The penalty? Either allow your least preferred device to be seized by Mexican customs, or in line with the country’s General Rules for Foreign Trade, under Baggage and Passenger Allowance, pay a fee representing 19% of the object’s value, up to $4,000. And beware: that’s 19% of the value it is deemed to have by a Mexican customs operative.
Tammy Levant, a writer for Elite Travel who spoke to USA Today about her border experience said she felt the customs official had over-estimated the value of her “older generation iPad”, which generated a larger fine for her to pay.
“Driving people away”
The rules are not new, but the general consensus among commentators seems to be that they are being applied more assiduously than before, particularly for arrivals at Cancun International, the country’s busiest hub which handles 500 daily flights and more than 13 million passengers a year.
Levant, owner of Elite Travel Management Group, has regularly visited Cancun two or three times a year, often training groups of colleagues, and had never been pulled aside by customs before. She pointed to the large numbers of professional conferences held in Mexico and suggested applying the tax on multiple devices would soon start “driving people away.”
Outdated rule “hurts Mexico’s image”
Meanwhile, a Cancun specialist travel agent Michael Boguslavskiy, said the rule “has actually been in effect for a very, very long time.” It also applies to items such as DVDs and cameras and was, in his words, “a massively outdated list at this point but it’s still there.”
But if Mexican stakeholders have their way, the rule might not be in force for much longer. Local news outlet Riviera Maya News spoke to the President of the Tulum Hotel Association, David Ortiz Mena, who acknowledged that remote working had generated a new kind of traveller who expects to be able to work across multiple devices.
“We will have to review this situation and the law to avoid this type of impact. There are already all kinds of comments on social media,” Ortiz Mena said. Saying the news coverage “hurts our image” he insisted, “If we want to be a tourist powerhouse, let us be consistent.”
