Sherly Diaz / The Panama Post

Panama’s offer always aimed a little higher; with fewer tourists, but with higher quality and consumption. Business tourism has a higher individual disbursement

During the first half of 2009, Central America received 5.272,959 international visitors. Of this total, Panama ranked fourth with 803,863 visitors. However, Panama ranked second in tourism revenues of U.S. $ 688.78 million. These figures were provided by the GPN Network, which is sponsored by the Swiss government and fueled by the statistics departments of the institute of tourism of each country in the region.
The figures indicate that Panama ranked below countries like Costa Rica, which led the chart with 1.025.46 international visitors, followed by Honduras with 862,847, and Guatemala with 805,133 visitors (see box: international visitors´ arrivals).

Interestingly enough, Panama scored the second place when it came to the income that was received from tourism, which amounted to US$688.78 millions, only outranked by Costa Rica with US$1.054.89 millions (see box: Income from tourism).

Diego Fernandez de Cordoba, president of the Convention and Visitors Bureau of Panama (BCVP), said that the outcome of the arrival of international visitors in the region surely responds to the active traffic and frequent cross-border trade of the neighboring Central American countries (Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala), which is very active when compared to the one in Panama that is somewhat active in the border with just Costa Rica.

"Instead, Panama's tourism marketing aims at travelers who are coming from large international markets," he said.

Ana Royo, president of the Panamanian Association of Tourism Operators (APOTUR), agrees with Fernandez de Cordova. In her opinion, it is necessary to acknowledge the fact that there is a large domestic tourism exchange between Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua.

The businesswoman commented that only the case of Costa Rica is different because this country actually receives more "pure tourism". She added that Costa Rica's figures have also grown even more because of visitors from countries such as Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and of groups of incentives from the U.S., which were not planned initially for Costa Rica, but changed their destination.

Tourism revenues

The figures reveal that during the first half of this year, the total tourism revenue amounted to U.S. $ 3.275.20 million. The country that received the highest income was Costa Rica with U.S. $ 1,054 million, followed by Panama with $ 688.78 million, and thirdly Guatemala with $ 572.5 million.

In the local level, some members of the tourism industry attribute the rank achieved by Panama to the fact that visitors who entered the country arrived mainly by air, and that it is mainly tourism that comes to engage on business, resulting on higher individual expenditure.

"The cross-border tourism that occurs in other countries deals mainly with migrant labor or transitory visits of a single day, which trade in the borders between the countries. Those visitors are not necessarily tourists", Fernandez de Cordova declared.

Panama's offer always aimed a little higher; with fewer tourists, but with higher quality and consumption.

Expectations

For Fernandez de Cordoba, the first half was marked by the onset of the global economic crisis. Therefore a decrease in the number of visitors is understandable, and could very well increase during the second half should the global economy somewhat pick up.

Nevertheless, Royo says that she does not expect a significant increase, since the end of this year is very uncertain.

"The feedbacks that I get from my colleagues indicate that their expectations are low for September and October. Most of them are trading for November and December, but mostly for the year 2.010, which they outline as a better year than this one," she said.

Actions

The president of APOTUR indicated that several new programs are being created, improving the local offer. They are traveling throughout the country, looking for innovative tourism proposals. In addition, all sorts of promotions and marketing strategies are in place through the internet by wholesalers, and by colleagues of Central America, who use Multidestino (a worldwide travel system).

Meanwhile, José Thomas, president of the Association of Small Hotels of Panama (Hoppan), said that they are participating in the promotion that is carried out by the Panama Tourism Authority (PTA). Such promotion consists on applying discount rates of 25% or more on hotels, car rentals, airline tickets, restaurants and operators in different destinations around the country.

This strategy, which is carried out in conjunction with the private sector, responds to the global economic crisis. It will apply to international markets from August 1 to October 31