Latin America to Benefit from Rekindled Travel Industry

Latin America as a whole, and more especially Mexico and the Caribbean, will reap great benefits from a reenergized world tourist sector that’s pitting a hefty euro against a weakened U.S. dollar, said Klaus Laepple, chairman of the Travel Agency & Tour Operator Association of Germany.

Germany’s travel industry hopes to push sales up between 3 and 3.5 percent this year. “The engine is roaring back,” said Mr. Laepple in a news conference prior to the grand opening Friday of the Berlin International Tourism Marketplace (ITB).

Peru is this year’s guest of honor for the opening ceremony of ITB, the world’s largest travel fair featuring this time around over 10,000 exhibitors from 178 countries, and in which some 60,000 visitors are expected to walk past the turnstiles.

A stalwart European currency and a huge accumulation of trip demands are putting an end to the now waning crisis that hit tourism everywhere over the last two and a half years. For some experts, the year 2004 is marking an upsurge of long-haul travel outside the Old World.

Latin America as a whole –especially Mexico and the Caribbean- as well as the U.S., Canada and South East Asia will be the new targets in this increasingly bigger tourist penchant.

“Prices in most travel destinations have fallen down as much as 20 percent,” Mr. Laepple went on to explain. In 2003, the average travel fare plunged 5 percent to €554 per person.

As far as short-haul trips are concerned, most of the world’s attention will be riveted on Egypt and the Spanish island of Majorca (eastern Balearics), two places that have definitely spurred up the wanderlust of German travelers.

Germany will remain, however, the destination of choice for Deutsch trekkers, embracing as much as 34.3 percent of the market. In 2003, some 339 million trippers stayed in German hotels and only 42 million of those guests were foreigners.

The region of Western Mecklemburg-Pomerania, with gorgeous coastal plains bathed by the Baltic Sea, is marching ahead of the bunch with a solid 5.5 percent growth.