Mexico stepped up efforts to promote its “Welcome Back” tourism recovery campaign in the U.S. with a New York media and trade blitz by Minister of Tourism Rodolfo Elizondo and the CEO of the Mexico Tourism Board, Oscar Fitch.

Looking to boost U.S. arrivals for the coming winter travel season, Elizondo and Fitch met tour operators, services providers and media outlets, including Travel Weekly.

“We lost the summer in terms of U.S. bookings although July has been okay,” Fitch told Travel Weekly. “But our branding is now focused on the fall and winter.”

According to Elizondo, Mexican hotels and resorts were helped during the H1N1 crisis by the fact that up to 20% of Mexicans now vacation domestically, softening the blow from international cancellations. But both international and domestic bookings are now approaching normal levels once again.

“Occupancies in Cancun are now 80%,” he said. “And we’ll recover up to 90% of the [usual] U.S. and Canada markets by the weekend.”

The “Welcome Back” campaign, launched June 13, is a multi-media marketing campaign aimed at travelers from the U.S. and Canada, many of whom might be wary of booking Mexico holidays due to bad press regarding drug violence and H1N1, or the “swine flu,” according to the tourism board.

The effort focuses on 12 major markets in the U.S. and six in Canada, which in total account for 80% of Mexico’s international arrivals. In 2008, the destination welcomed 22.6 million foreign visitors (a 5.9% jump), including 18 million Americans.