Colombia Reaching Out for Business Travelers

As new destinations in Latin America develop their appeal for both leisure and business travel, different nations are reaching out for new kinds of visitors. Luis German Restrepo, executive director USA for Proexport Colombia (the government agency in charge of promoting trade, tourism and investment in the country) and Camilo Duque, the leisure tourism director, explained why Colombia is growing for a wider range of travelers.

With a growing middle class and decreased unemployment in cities, he continued, the country’s economy has stabilized, leading to increased development and safety. Duque noted that Colombia is #11 on the list of emerging markets worldwide, and that its economy is #3 for the South/Central America region.

For travelers, the Pacific Alliance free trade agreement makes it easy for travelers to move between neighboring countries without requiring an extra visa. (The current member states are Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru.

Costa Rica began the process of joining the Alliance in February.) Some embassies of allied countries will even share offices with other members in order to facilitate travel throughout the region, making it easy to combine a business trip with a leisure excursion. “We’re trying to promote different cultures and experiences,” German said. “We’re not competing. This is complementary.”

Significantly, business and event-focused travel dominated Colombia’s inbound scene in 2013, with events attracting a 30 percent growth in visitors over 2012 and business travel in general seeing an increase of more than 50 percent.

In the past 10 years, German said, travel to Colombia has grown “dramatically”: Close to 4 million tourists came to the country last year (a growth of well over 7 percent from 2012), and he expects that goal to be reached in 2014. In the last three years, international arrival of tourists has consistently been increasing.

South and North America are the main regions of origin for Colombia's foreign travelers, contributing 70.9 percent of the total foreign arrivals. In 2013, the main cities visited by Americans in Colombia were Bogota (53.9 percent), Cartagena (12.5 percent), and Medellin (10.6 percent).

Source: eturbonews.com