The elected president of the Panamanian Association of Hotels (Apatel), Raúl Jiménez, recognized that in order to recover the sector, the reactivation of international tourism is necessary and warned that local demand is not enough to maintain jobs, nor to national tourist infrastructure.
In Jiménez’s opinion, the tourism sector has passed the worst of the pandemic, after more than seven months closed.
Despite the fact that, in the last two months of last year, there was a good rebound in tourists entering the country, it revealed that of the 122 hotels that belong to the union’s membership, 15% have not opened.
“We estimate that between 20 and 25% of the rooms in the country left the square. Around 25% is the Panamanian occupation”, he indicated.
He added that these percentages are calculated based on the 32,000 rooms that existed in 2019, the year before the Covid-19 pandemic.
Currently there are between 15 and 20 thousand rooms operating in the country, between active and non-active members of Apatel, however, some hotels are not operating at 100% capacity, since they do not have demand.
