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LATIN AMERICA |
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Chile Promotes Domestic Travel To Help
Depressed Tourism Industry
By Gida Homad-Hamam - Santiago Times
SANTIAGO - In an attempt to survive the
economic crisis and the depreciating US
dollar, Chile’s tourism industry has
amplified national travel promotions
targeting local and foreign vacationers.
Chile’s tourism industry has been among
those hardest hit by the crisis, with a 10%
decrease in foreign visitors this past year.
At the same time, the number of local
residents opting to travel within Chile has
grown by 9%.
Since the beginning of the crisis in 2008
hotels and airlines have put together
special packages promoting Chilean
destinations, the benefits of which have
started to show.
Up until September Lan Chile airline
reservations for travel within the country
had increased by 20% compared with the same
period in 2008.
Things may be on the verge of changing,
however. According to Maritza Cartagena,
products manager at Cocha, a Chilean travel
agency, the recent depreciation of the US
dollar has led many Chilean vacationers to
consider travelling to locations outside of
Chile.
“This will not affect our company’s sales,
because those who were planning to travel
within Chile will opt to travel abroad
instead,” said Cartagena. But it obviously
won’t help tourism revenue within Chile.
While some locations have seen a surge in
tourism, others like the southern city of
Punta Arenas (Region XII) have been hard hit
by the economic crisis.
Punta Arenas is promoted as the Chilean
cruise ferry hub for those braving the
Antarctic, but it lags far behind its
Argentine counterpart, Ushuaia. While 237
thousand cruise ship tourists visited
Ushuaia last season only 87 thousand visited
Punta Arenas.
This season the number has fallen to 71
thousand visitors.
“The main advantage Ushuaia has over Punta
Arenas is that it takes two days as opposed
to three to get to the Antarctic,” said
Alejandro Riquelme, regional vice-president
of the Production and Commerce
Confederation.
“But there are also more benefits offered in
the Argentine city where cruise ship
operations are non taxable. Also, the
[Chilean] regional and national governments
have not invested much in the Magallanes
region. In Ushuaia there are a cruise dock,
an international airport and a marina, all
of which are financed by the government and
allocated to private businesses.”
No surprise then that more than 90% of
traffic between the continent and the
Antarctic takes place from and to Ushuaia.
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