Uruguay’s travel industry picks up steam

Two years ago, Uruguay’s shorelines were virtually deserted as a result of the economic crisis hitting its neighboring countries. But now the local tourist sector in this small South American nation is once basking in the glory days as an avalanche of travelers landed there in early January.

Stores packed with items that flew off the shelves, restaurants that were forced to hire more waiters in the nick of time and soldout hotels were the immediate results of this tourist invasion that went beyond the local sector’s wildest expectations.

“You’ve got to be early at the restaurants and at the beach to get a piece of sand. Everything is crowded,” said Marcos, 28, who chose a beach in the province of Rocha, some 220 kilometers east of Montevideo, to spend his vacations.

According to official stats, the arrival of foreign tourists to Uruguay was up 44 percent to 127,729 travelers in the first eleven days of the year, an inflow that gave some wiggle room to this key sector of the country’s economy.

A similar situation happened in Uruguayan seaports where over 70 cruise liners carried more than 50,000 passengers. To top it all off, megabuck investments poured by five-star hotel chains in the exclusive site of Punta del Este also contributed to the upturn.

The tourist invasion forced a number of lodgings in Punta del Este (some 135 kilometers east of Montevideo) to turn down new check-ins over the past two weekends. Even vehicles in most car rentals were all gone.

And countless stores in town –a place usually coveted by well-heeled Argentine, Brazilian and European sunbathers- had to hire extra employees to meet the overblown demand of services.

Before the Argentine debacle in the late 2001, Uruguay’s travel sector was running at full throttle as one of the country’s top powerhouses. But the economic collapse of neighboring Argentina –whose economy dipped 10.9 percent in 2002- were nothing but devastating for cash-strapped Uruguay that was at the time scrambling out of a recession that had teed off back in 1999.

During the first quarter of 2002, the number of foreign arrivals dropped a staggering 45 percent to 533,400 visitors, while earnings plummeted 41.2 percent, down from $344 million between January and March 2001 to $202 million.

The sector hit bedrock bottom last year when the amount of summertime vacationers plunged 2.7 percent to 518,740 and revenues took a 26 percent nosedive to a meager $149 million.

Uruguay’s economy shrank back 10.8 percent in 2002, yet it grew 1.0 percent the following year, its first upswing in five years. Experts hope the country’s economy could soar 5 percent this time around.

Even though the increase in the number of tourists is largely owed to economic recovery in Argentina and Brazil, state-run promotional campaigns in several Latin American and European countries have also paid off.

According to the National Immigration Department, the inflow of Brazilian trippers, for instance, jumped 60 percent in the first eleven days of the year to 10,104 people, while the amount of Argentines grew 59 percent to 68,058 travelers.