The Cabinet Council approved several impact measures for the reactivation of the tourism sector and the economy, including the Master Plan for Sustainable Tourism 2020-2025.
The Master Plan for Sustainable Tourism (PMTS) 2020-2025 will focus on strengthening the institutional capacity of the ATP, investing in the country's tourism promotion, improving the tourism products offered by Panama and in infrastructure, maintenance and basic services.
Using big data management techniques, it is possible to know, with greater precision than with traditional methods, the socio-demographic characteristics, tastes, preferences and interests of consumers living in a specific area of a city or of groups of people who visit particular stores.
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After foreign exchange revenues from tourism in Costa Rica fell from $4 billion to $1.343 billion between 2019 and 2020 due to the closure of borders and airports, it is projected that the sector will remain in the red during 2021.
March 2020, when most countries began to register Covid-19 cases, was the month in which revenues began to fall. Statistics from the Central Bank of Costa Rica (BCCR) show that in this context of pandemic, between April and October of last year, the Costa Rican tourism industry practically did not earn any foreign currency.
President Carlos Alvarado and the Minister of Tourism Gustavo Segura, signed the Law for the Promotion of Tourist Marinas and Coastal Development, a regulation that modernizes the conditions in which the country's marinas operate.
The law, signed on April 5, authorizes foreign-flagged vessels and their crews to carry out lucrative activities related to aquatic transportation, recreation and tourism within the waters of the national territory, allowing the hiring of national captains and sailors to carry out these practices, informed the Costa Rican Tourism Institute (ICT).
After the political crisis the country went through in 2018 and the health crisis it faced in 2020, businessmen maintain hopes that tourism activities will recover in 2021 and in the following years return to the path of growth.
The Nicaraguan tourism sector has been rained on over the past three years. In April 2018, companies engaged in these activities began to experience a crisis, as a political and social crisis occurred in the country, which ended up affecting the productive activity.
In the last months of 2020 and in January 2021, interest in travel agency services and other tourism-related services began to increase, a rise that was most evident in Costa Rica and Guatemala.
Through a system that monitors in real time changes in the interests and preferences of consumers in Central American countries, developed by CentralAmericaData, it is possible to project demand trends in the short and long term, for the different products, sectors and markets operating in the region.
The amount of visitors arrivals to Central America and the Dominican Republic shows a downward trend since 2016, which was consolidated in 2019 and worsened in 2020, a phenomenon that is explained by the events recorded in the extra-regional market.
Between 2015 and 2019, the countries of the SICA region, the average growth rate of visitor arrivals was 4.9%, where only in 2019 there was a negative rate of -0.2%, highlights a document of the Secretariat for Central American Tourism Integration (SITCA) published in January 2021.
Due to the outbreak of covid-19 worldwide and restrictions on passenger transportation, only 1.01 million visitors arrived in the country during 2020, 68% less than what was reported in 2019, when 3.14 million tourists arrived.
Although the fall in tourist arrivals was generally resounding, during the last months of 2020 a more favorable behavior was reported.
In the context of the health crisis generated by the outbreak of covid-19, businessmen of the sector foresee that at the end of 2020 the tourism industry will add revenues of about $176 million, an amount that would be 66% less than that reported in 2019.
The estimates of the National Chamber of Tourism of Nicaragua (Canatur), are more pessimistic than the projections of the Nicaraguan Institute of Tourism (Intur), since according to the business association the income will amount to $176 million and according to the government institution it will add $216 million at the end of the year.
According to estimates, hotel occupancy for the December 27, 2020 to January 1, 2021 period will be 100% in the Pacific beaches and in the destinations located in Lake Atitlan. This dynamism is explained by the trips made by local tourists.
For the last days of the year, the sector's union predicts that hotel occupancy will rise to 70% in Antigua Guatemala, 50% in Peten and barely 20% in Izabal and the Verapaces.
Due to Costa Rica's estimated average hotel occupancy rate of 52% by 2020, well below the 95% recorded at the end of 2019, businessmen in the sector expect that in this context of crisis there will be no peak seasons next year.
The tourism sector is one of the hardest hit by the economic crisis generated by the outbreak of covid-19, because mobility restrictions, the closure of air terminals and the fear of tourists to be infected, have influenced the drastic fall in tourism activity.
Between October and November, the number of visitors from the US quadrupled, from 6,000 to 24,000, a rise reported in the context of the economic reopening and the reactivation of commercial flights.
The 24,606 Americans who arrived in the country during November, represent a little more than a quarter of the visits from the US registered in the same month of 2019, informed the Costa Rican Tourism Institute (ICT).
From October 12, to enter Panamanian territory, foreign visitors must present a PCR test or antigen negative to covid-19 with a maximum of 48 hours and will not have to comply with mandatory isolation.
After the U.S. changed the level of the travel alert it issues for its citizens to evaluate the possibility of traveling to Guatemala from 4 to 3, tourism entrepreneurs believe that it is progress and that the country should focus on obtaining category 2 as soon as possible.
As a result of the covid-19 outbreak, which in turn generated an economic crisis, the U.S.
The risks involved when visiting a destination and the possibility of making reservations with less notice are fundamental factors that consumers will consider when deciding whether or not to take a trip in the coming months.
The outbreak of covid-19 in several countries around the world almost caused air, sea and land transport to disappear, as several governments decided to ban leisure and business travel.