🗺️ Tourism Expenditures

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Tourism 🗺️

The late great Anthony Bourdain, who visited much of our beloved region while exploring new cuisines and great food, once had a quote that we’ll paraphrase with the following:

“Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you, it should change you…You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something behind.”

We’re big believers here in seeing as much of Latin America (and the world) as possible, and it’s clear that much of the region feels the same, given that total tourism expenditure topped half a trillion dollars last year.

From San Diegans crossing the border for some good Tijuana tacos to people visiting the southern tip of the world in Ushuaia, Argentina, tourism is a booming industry for much of Latin America.

Interestingly, however, some countries see their own citizens exploring and sightseeing more, while others rely on foreign arrivals.

Most regional countries clearly still see more economic activity from domestic tourists. Take Brazil, for example, where roughly 95% of tourism spending comes from Brazilian citizens. Evidently, despite all of the Europeans in Ipanema and the Argentines in Buzios, most tourism money remains national for Brazil.

Most South American countries, especially those in the Southern Cone, see similar trends, although Colombia and Ecuador emerge as two interesting exceptions.

With lower domestic tourism and high numbers of tourists from neighboring countries plus farther-off sources such as the United States, these two Andean countries actually have a larger international tourism market, in line more with small Central American and Caribbean countries like Costa Rica, Panama, and the Dominican Republic.

But where Colombia and Ecuador set themselves apart from these three peers is the substantially smaller role of tourism in their economies. After all, Colombia and Panama are neighbors, yet tourism is 200% more important to one economy than the other.

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