Tourism industry in Latin America grows. Previous year (2007) was a success for the Latin American tourism industry. Number of tourists grew and it is expected that even more people will arrive this year. Argentina witnessed a record numbers of visitors in 2007. Forty percent of the tourists came from neighboring countries; there was also 22.5 % of Europeans and 27 % of the visitors came from the rest of America. For the industry it is important that Air Comet Chile requested authorization to fly to Buenos Aires and that Austral, an airline based in Buenos Aires, already has the approval to fly to Santiago de Chile. Chile based company, Sky Airline, also announced that it already has the authorization to go to Argentina.
In Uruguay, the Ministry of Tourism claims that the number of tourists coming to the country rose by 2% compared to 2006. They also informed that the tourists brought US$ 800 million to the country. The officials continue to cooperate with Japan which should bring more Japanese tourists to Latin America. It is also possible that Japan airlines will arrive at San Pablo and Montevideo.
The Brazilian government takes measures to lower the taxes for hotel businesses. Another interesting development in Brazil is the start of construction of the Radisson Maceió hotel of Atlantica Hotels International. The hotel should be operational in 18 months.
There was also an 8.9 % increase in number of foreigners coming to Peru last year (2007). A major part of the 182,806 foreigners was from Chile (31.4 %), 19.4 % o them were from the United States, Ecuador accounted for 9.9 %, others were from Spain (7.2 %), Argentina (4.9 %), and Bolivia (4.5 percent).
This year (2008) should be also good. Uruguay expects record numbers of Brazilians and Chile predicts it will receive some 700,000 foreign tourists during January-March of 2008.
