Financial Turmoil Pounds Argentina’s Travel Sector

The fallout from Argentina’s financial turmoil is having a huge impact on travel to and from the country, according to latest figures from ForwardKeys.

Outbound travel bookings collapsed after the peso crashed in May and president Macri asked the IMF for a bailout.

Bookings for travel from Argentina to other Latin American countries (which have the largest share of Argentina’s outbound travel, at 43 percent) slumped year-on-year by 26.1 percent.

Total international outbound bookings were down 20.4 percent, having shown an increase of 8.4 percent between January and April.

Other destinations hardest hit are the US and Canada down 18.2 percent, and the Caribbean, down 36.8 percent. All had shown increases up to April.

Chile tops the list of countries showing the largest falls in flight bookings from Argentina year-on-year, down 50.6 percent.

The ForwardKeys findings show the countries’ most potentially affected by Argentina’s travel collapse, because of their market share of its visitors, are Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Chile, followed by Bolivia, Peru, Cuba and Colombia.

Argentina itself is also suffering an inbound decline among Latin American travelers who are nervous about its current economic difficulties.

Bookings made in May were nearly 14 percent down on those made in May last year. Looking ahead, Argentina’s problems are set to persist as the country struggles to find economic cures. Bookings for arrival in June to August are behind by 4.9 percent on last year.

Bookings from Brazil alone are lagging by nine percent, according to ForwardKeys, which predicts future travel patterns by analyzing 17 million booking transactions a day.