A rich popular music, the best soccer in the planet, beautiful people, happy and hopeful, almost 8000 kilometers of beaches blessed by sun most of the year. During decades, Brazil didn’t pay attention to the tourism, imagining that, naturally, sooner or later, tourists would be in huge lines waiting to visit Brazil. But this didn’t happen and was necessary a long period to realize two facts why the area wasn’t successful. The first one is that Brazil doesn’t have exclusivity about the beauty of the planet and the second one is that without serious investments in tourism – promoting the image abroad for the improvement of the infrastructure to host the tourists. - The country takes the risk of staying for always in a second division in of the richest areas, dynamics and competition of the global economy.
The shock of reality helped Brazil to wake up in the tourism market. In the last years, thanks to the effort of a group of public and private areas, the country left the condition of promises to transform into a serious competitive market . The statistics already show the results, and are very relevant. According to the OMT- World Organization of Tourism, while the number of passengers of international trips raised around 50% in the planet between 1995 and 2005, the growth registered in Brazil at the same time was 170%. The reason of the rise of visitors, the exchange generated by the tourism got a record number of 4.3 billions of dollars. Result: Tourism is the fifth major commercial product of Brazil, behind only of iron minerals, oil, soy and automobiles.
The money brought by the tourists helped to move the market that earns more than 100Billions of Reais a year and employs more than 2 millions of people in the country. Isn’t coincidence that Brazil got the eyes of the big international hotel’s groups. Since a decade to now, more than 100 internationals chains got in Brazil. They are responsible for 2 of the 10 new establishments that are being built. Brazil was in the 5th place in the list of the 10 best country to the tourists, behind China, US, Morocco and Argentina, being in front of Spain and Greece.
Today, according to the OMT, Brazil is the 36th major destiny of the world in terms of visitors, and the 39th in terms of profits in the area. The development of national tourism faced a lot of problems with the infrastructure, for example the air blackout. That generated between the year of 2005 and 2006 a down number of visitors to Brazil from 5, 4 millions of people to 5, 1 millions. The first World Rank of tourism was analyzed 124 nations, being judged fundamental topics in the tourist industry, for example safety and infrastructure. The winners were Switzerland, Austria and Germany. Brazil got the 59th place, behind of countries like Bahrain, Costa Rica and Estonia. According to the analysts the problems with violence, the road’s bad conditions and the delays in airports are the causes that were more negative to the evaluation. The crises in the airports its only one topic of the long historic problems. The air transportation is the most used by the foreign tourists that visits Brazil, three in four visitors gets there by airplanes. Moreover, there are huge concentrations in the airports of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro: 87% of the international flights happens in the airports of Cumbica, in Sao Paulo, or The Galeao in Rio. At the moment, however, the deficiency of the infrastructure its what have more created problems in the airports. With the growth of the demand in the last years, the airport aren’t able to support it all. Since 2003, the Brazilian Company of Infrastructure area (INFRAERO) invested 2, 4 billions of Reais in operations and constructions to the improvements of 19 terminals in the country.
* Our first two posts covered people and tourism- the next two will cover politics and economy.
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