Tourism Trends & Visitor Numbers
Every wondered where everyone is visiting in Latin America?
I just got the 2006 edition of “Tourism Market Trends”, which is produced by the World Tourism Organisation. It’s choc-a-bloc full of what is for me fascinating tourism statistics about visitor numbers and regions. To boil it all down into a blog article, here’s a list of International Tourist Arrivals by country for the year 2005. In brackets are International Tourist Arrivals for the year 2000 for comparison. Numbers are in 1000’s, so where you see the figure of 3,823 for Argentina, that means Argentina had 3,823,000 international visitors in the year 2005.
South America:
Argentina - 3,823 (up from 2,909 in the year 2000)
Bolivia - 504 (319)
Brazil - 5358 (5313)
Chile - 2027 (1742)
Colombia - 933 (557)
Ecuador - 860 (627)
French Guiana - 95 (no data for 2000)
Guyana - 117 (105)
Paraguay - 341 (289)
Peru - 1,486 (828)
Suriname - 160 (57)
Uruguay - 1,808 (1,968)
Venezuela - 706 (469).
As for Central America:
Belize - 237 (196)
Costa Rica - 1,679 (1,088)
El Salvador - 969 (795)
Guatemala - 1,316 (826)
Honduaras - 673 (471)
Nicaragua - 712 (486)
Panama - 702 (484).
Initial thoughts would be - Brazil’s tourism industry is stagnating. Colombia’s and Peru’s tourism industries are booming. A hell of a lot of Argentinans visit Uruguay. And what on earth are so many people doing going to El Salvador?