The number of tourist arrivals in Chile increased 15.9% in the first nine months of the year (Jan/September) totalling 2.565.525, according to the Federation of Tourism Enterprises, which represents “an excellent accumulated growth”.
In terms of outbound travel South Americans are ahead of everyone else in the Americas. In 2012, they undertook 12% more trips abroad than last year, marking a new record. The country clearly driving growth is Brazil.
P&O, a subsidiary of Carnival Corporation Plc and one of the world’s leading cruise operators will be omitting Puerto Madryn, Ushuaia and Buenos Aires from its 2013 season because of the difficulties encountered by its red ensign vessels in Argentine ports during recent months. However the company confirms that the vessels will continue to call in the Falkland Islands.
Brazil's president, Dilma Rousseff, told reporters in Paris her government intends to build approximately 800 regional airports in Brazil. The project considers that each city with over 100.000 inhabitants should have an airport within a 60-kilometer range.
One billion tourists have traveled the world in 2012, marking a new record for international tourism – a sector that accounts for one in every 12 jobs and 30% of the world’s services exports. On the symbolic arrival date of the one-billionth tourist, 13 December 2012, UNWTO revealed the actions tourists can take to ensure their trips benefit the people and places they visit, as voted by the public.
Ushuaia tourism operators expressed concern and called for common sense to prevail after two major cruises finally decided this week not to call at in Argentine Tierra del Fuego after local authorities could not guarantee that the visiting vessels would not be exposed to the same intimidation tactics and delays experienced recently in Buenos Aires and earlier this year in the extreme south terminal because they include the Falkland Islands in their itineraries.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) released an industry traffic forecast showing that airlines expect to welcome some 3.6 billion passengers in 2016. That’s about 800 million more than the 2.8 billion passengers carried by airlines in 2011.
A record one billion people will travel across an international border as a tourist in 2012, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council. That means that one in seven people on the planet will participate in world travelling this year, an activity that just a few decades ago was exclusively for the wealthy.
The Argentine Government’s acts of intimidation towards cruise companies which have planned to visit the Falkland Islands continues to impact on the Islands tourism industry with a further two ships cancelling their February visits on Wednesday.
Argentina energetically rejected the UK complaint about alleged intimidation of vessels linked to Falklands/Malvinas activities as well as the awarding of squid licences in waters close to the South Atlantic archipelago.