ECONOMY-ARGENTINA: Amidst Crisis, Tourism Takes Off

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 11 2003 (IPS) - Tourism in Argentina is recovering the dynamism it enjoyed in the past, largely due to the greatly depreciated peso, which contributed to the fact that this South American nation saw the world’s biggest increase in visitors in 2002.

The number of foreigners visiting Argentina grew 15.4 percent last year with respect to 2001, in spite of the difficulties afflicting the tourism industry worldwide or the fact that the economic collapse here led to street disturbances, looting, police crackdowns and security problems earlier in 2002.

The World Tourism Organisation’s latest report says the number of international tourist arrivals in 2002 fell an average of 0.6 percent in the Americas overall, but plummeted seven percent in South America.

Hardest hit in the region were Uruguay, with a 34-percent decline in foreign visitors with respect to 2001, Venezuela with 26 percent, Chile with 17 percent and Brazil with a 7.2-percent decrease.

But in this negative regional panorama, Argentina turned out to be a magnet for international visitors, especially from neighbouring countries.

The national tourism industry also benefited from the fact that Argentines travelled within their own country, as their pocketbooks kept them from heading abroad for vacations.

The Argentine Tourism Secretariat reports that Chileans were the most numerous among foreign visitors in 2002, followed by Bolivians, Brazilians, Paraguayans and Uruguayans.

The devaluation of the Argentine peso – more than 65 percent with respect to the dollar since January 2002, after being pegged on par to the dollar for a decade – favoured the visitors arriving from abroad, acknowledged secretary of tourism, Daniel Scioli.

But that variable alone cannot explain why the tourism business grew, commented Scioli, pointing out that Argentina benefits from its "diversity of destinations, infrastructure, high quality services, in a peaceful region."

Argentina has ocean beaches, lakes and rivers, mountains, ski resorts and world-renowned fly-fishing locations for tourists who like the outdoors, and the cities are known for their restaurants, museums, and cultural shows, particularly anything related to tango.

The devalued peso had two impacts on tourism. It attracted more foreigners to the country and kept tens of thousands of Argentines at home. For more than a decade, wealthier Argentines had spent their annual vacations in Brazil, Uruguay, the Caribbean or the United States, taking advantage of the fact that one peso equalled one dollar.

One clear indicator that Argentines did not venture far last year is that Pinamar, one of the favourite beaches on the Atlantic coast, saw a 273-percent increase in visitors from within the country.

Buenos Aires, meanwhile, was attractive to foreigners. After being listed among the 20 most expensive cities for the past 10 years, it is now among the five cheapest, according to the rating by the British magazine The Economist.

The wave of tourism also proved to be a boon to public coffers, providing 570 million dollars last year.

Chilean tourist María Eugenia Rodríguez spoke with IPS about the advantages the Argentine exchange rate has to offer while she punched numbers into her calculator, eyeing clothes in a shop window in downtown Buenos Aires.

"Some items cost 30 percent less than in Chile, and other things are even 50 percent cheaper," she said.

Her husband, Miguel Rodríguez, noted that in Buenos Aires they did not find the differentiated prices offered to tourists and to Argentine citizens, as they had seen in towns inland.

Nevertheless, he said, "just in case", he and his wife are only making purchases in shops where prices are clearly marked, "in pesos, not dollars."

In addition to Buenos Aires, where the aim of most of tourists from neighbouring countries is to shop, Tierra del Fuego, in Argentina’s extreme south, saw a 50-percent increase in foreign visitors.

The same dynamic was reported throughout Patagonia, also in the south. Whale-watching excursions based out of Puerto Madryn, in Chubut Province, saw 156 percent more tourists last year than in 2001, and El Calafate saw 90 percent more visitors who went to watch massive slabs of the Perito Moreno glacier tumble into the water.

The increase in tourism has reactivated projects to invest in hotels, for a total of more than a billion dollars in Buenos Aires and other towns that attract international visitors.

Within the context of Argentina’s continued crisis, tourism has contributed to economic development in the capital and the provinces. Directly and indirectly, the industry employs one million of the 15 million people who make up the country’s economically active population.