By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 12 2000 (IPS)

Although South America registered 15.4 million tourist arrivals in 1999, it would have to increase the number of visitors by 50 percent to reach the total that Paris alone receives every year.

International tourism flows provide a bleak reflection of the global economic disequilibrium to which it contributes.

The World Tourism Organisation (WTO) reported that of the 663 million people who spent at least one night outside their countries of residence last year, Europe was the preferred destination, accounting for 59 percent of arrivals.

France, the top destination, welcomed 73 million tourists in 1999, while Brazil was visited by just 5.1 million, despite the fact that it is 16 times the size of France and has a population three times larger. Spain was in second place last year, with 51.7 million arrivals.

Bayard Boiteux, director of the School of Tourism of UniverCidade, a centre of higher learning located in Rio de Janeiro, told IPS that it was “regrettable” that a country the size of Brazil and with its rich natural attractions accounted for less than one percent of the leisure industry, one of the world’s fastest-growing sectors.

Moreover, a long-standing pattern is that the number of Brazilians travelling abroad outstrip arrivals to Brazil, which means resources continue to be transferred to richer nations, especially Europe and the United States, he added.

From 1996 to 1998, Brazil accumulated a deficit of 12.12 billion dollars in terms of travel to and from the country, according to Central Bank statistics, and the huge devaluation of the real in January 1999 only reduced the negative balance by 1.4 billion dollars last year.

The devaluation led to just a slight rise in tourism revenues, while it cut Brazilians’ expenditure on travel abroad nearly in half, and led to around 20 percent growth in the domestic tourism market, according to Caio Luiz de Carvalho, president of the Brazilian Institute of Tourism (Embratur), the government agency involved in developing the sector.

But tourism represents around six percent of Gross National Product, far from the global average of 13 percent.

The enormous gap between the world’s rich and poor regions in terms of tourist arrivals is growing, and the WTO projects that the flow of foreign tourists to Europe will have doubled, to 717 million, by 2020.

The increase will be seen mainly outside of the traditional tourist seasons, thus reducing the idle capacity of tourist installations and staff, the organisation added.

Figures on South America from the 1990s indicate the possibility of accelerated growth in arrivals to the region. But the statistics are unreliable and based on a small database.

From 1990 to 1999, international tourist arrivals in the region climbed from 7.89 to 15.44 million, according to WTO statistics.

That large increase was mainly due to an apparent fivefold rise in the number of visitors to Brazil. However, the data is distorted, because until 1997 Brazil’s statistics did not take into account a large part of the tourists coming from neighbouring countries, especially Argentina, most of whom arrived by land and were not counted.

For that reason, the numbers made a leap between 1997 and 1998, from 2.8 to 4.8 million arrivals, when the over-valued national currency did not justify an increase in visitors, let alone such a large one.

Not until 1995 did the government began to focus on tourism as strategic for development, given the sector’s direct influence on 52 other areas of the economy, said Carvalho.

Since then, eight billion dollars have been invested in basic infrastructure, and an additional six billion dollars are to be invested up to 2002. Part of the funds have come from the Inter- American Development Bank, which in recent years has provided strong support for the sector, as has the World Bank.

But international tourism flows continue to be determined by geography, which means advances made by developing regions in attracting visitors are slow and demand enormous efforts. Of the 350 million Europeans travelling abroad in 1999, around 85 percent were visiting other European countries, the WTO reported.

The WTO anticipates that the proportion of visitors to other continents will grow only slightly, and that 76 percent of international travel will still be short-distance by 2020.

Brazil’s target is 6.5 billion foreign visitors and 57 million internal tourists by 2003, which would generate 500,000 new jobs, said Carvalho.

According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, besides constituting a 4.5 trillion dollar global business, tourism provided 192 million jobs in 1999, a poorly distributed source of income that is increasingly disputed by the world’s countries.

To expand its share of that fast-growing business, Brazil will have to invest more in publicity, diversify its offer, currently limited to “samba, carnaval, beaches and mulattas,” provide cultural tours and reduce costs, said Boiteux.

The local population should also understand the importance of tourism, and be trained to welcome visitors and treat them well, he added.

In addition, Brazilians must begin to learn Spanish, and all tourist installations should provide travel literature and information in that language, since 48 percent of visitors to Brazil come from its Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) partners — Spanish-speaking Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, Boiteux concluded.

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