*Exclusive Report for MercoPress by Peter Lowy.
International tourism is rebounding across Latin America this year, and to help ensure that the upward trend continues, 10 nations across the region participated in the inauguration last week of FITA, the International Tourism Fair of the Americas, in Mexico City.
Florida State wildlife officials were called to the world's largest cruise ship, Royal Caribbean's Oasis of the Seas, to deal with a little stowaway – a burrowing owl.
The numbers of tourists arriving in Uruguay during the first eight months of 2010, compared to the same period a year ago, increased 13% and revenue jumped 20.2% according to the latest figures released Thursday by the Ministry of Tourism Hector Lescano.
Foreign tourists left an estimated 204 million US dollars in land-locked Paraguay in 2009, according to figures made public by the head of the Tourism Office Liz Cramer, during a seminar held this week at the Central Bank.
The first six months of 2010 saw international tourist arrivals grow by 7% according to the August Interim Update of the UNWTO World Tourism Barometer. This result confirms the recovery trend beginning in the last quarter of 2009 and is expected to continue in the second half of the year at a somewhat more moderate rate but with Asia and Middle East continuing to lead.
The number of tourists visiting Uruguay during the first half of the year over the same period in 2009, increased 5.5% totalling 1.266.898, while revenue jumped 18.7% in US dollars (878.6 million USD), according to the latest numbers released by the Ministry of Tourism.
Sales of real estate in Uruguay’s internationally renowned resort Punta del Este and its area of influence reached almost 1.5 billion US dollars between January first 2009 and the first half of 2010, according to the Tourist Office from the County of Maldonado.
The number of tourists that arrived in Argentina during June increased 29.7% compared to the same month last year, according to a government report.
Two major South American airlines announced on Friday plans to merge and create the biggest carrier in the region. Brazil's largest airline TAM Linhas Aereas will be teaming up with Chile's LAN.
Less than a month for the beginning of the official cruise season 2010/11, prospects for Punta Arenas in the extreme south of Chile are not at all encouraging with an anticipated activity contraction of 33% over last year, according to the Empresa Portuaria Austral, EPA, which manages local port activities.