Argentina’s Foreign Tourist Bonanza Driven By Currency Devaluation

Argentine officials, businesspeople and hoteliers are wallowing in the tourist boom sweeping Argentina and following a record-high 1.2 million foreign visitors in 2003, most of them hailing from Brazil, Chile, the United States and Spain.

According to official stats, this year’s number of foreign arrivals soared a blistering 33.6 percent from 2002, thus giving the local leisure industry a big shot in the arm and taking a 7 percent slice off the Gross National Product (GNP) pie. The Argentine travel industry went through a couple of hard years (2001 and 2002) until it broke free from the belt-tightening currency parity to the dollar that had been in force since 1991.

Tourism secretary Enrique Meyers noted the data are really encouraging and added “the beginning of the 2004 summertime season has already nicked a 20 percent increase compared to the year before.”

Mr. Meyers said “the devaluation and favorable incidence of the 3-to-1 currency exchange have chipped in for a tourist bonanza,” yet he referred to the need and challenge of turning this phenomenon into a sustainable and self-sufficient process.

Buenos Aires’s sweltering summer forced residents to trek massively to the Atlantic beaches, as increasingly larger troves of American, Japanese, Italian, Colombian and Ecuadorian visitors –traveling with nothing but a camera slung on their shoulders and a backpack in tow- are seen roaming the streets of Buenos Aires.

Neighborhoods in La Boca, Recoleta and Puerto Madero –as well as theaters, museums and hundreds of local cafés- are witnessing swarms of trippers packing those places and shelling out between 290 and 300 million pesos (approximately $100 million) until the month of March.

At a national level, the number of hotel rooms for the ongoing summertime season jumped from 1,500 to 5,000 accommodations, as occupancy rates for early January hovered around 55 to 70 percent.

For a majority of foreign tourists, Buenos Aires is the first stopover in a long trip all across the country that includes all major destinations and several sightseeing spots in Patagonia, Bariloche, El Calafate and Ushuaia, let alone the Iguazu Waterfalls, the quasi-deserted northwest and the breathtaking scenery of the Mendoza province, a region well known for its wineries.

The greenback’s purchasing power (exchanged at 2.92 pesos and 3.70 to the euro) is not only making a splash in traditional shops of local handicrafts and leather, but also in sportswear and wines, whose price tags are also making a big difference.

According to Buenos Aires’s Tourism Undersecretary Marcela Cuesta, “the increase of tourism in the city is largely owed to a bigger amount of cruise liners docking in its piers and to more flights scheduled in recent months, not to mention a much better image of both Buenos Aires and Argentina to the outside world.