Nearly 12.8 million people toured the country during the second half of December and the first half of Januaryand mobilized $491,435 million in the gastronomic, hotel and commercial sector.
These figures compared to the previous season show that 2.3% more tourists traveled and total spending grew 19% compared to 2021, with the most visited sites being Mar del Plata, Bariloche, Villa Gesell; Pinamar; Las Grutas, and Carlos Paz who completed his 70 thousand available places.
In this context, the Secretary of Tourism of the Argentine Confederation of Medium Enterprises (CAME)Gregorio Werchow, highlighted today the increase in consumption in the first stage of the holiday season, which was higher than average, and announced that they expect the second half of this month to be “the same or better”, in dialogue with Télam Radio .
He also indicated that the first data show that between the second half of December and the first half of January the season began “With a good tourist mobilization, from every point of view, there was more tourism and besides there was a consumption that was higher than the average, even taking the inflationary indices”despite the “great unknown” that existed for the actors of the tourism sector, due to the lack of the Pre-Trip incentive.
Therefore, Werchow specified that the lack of this program “was overcome since for exchange reasons the large influx of foreign tourists has benefited, mainly from neighboring countries, as well as from the Northern Hemisphere for climatic reasons. They came to our country , to the Atlantic Coast, fundamentally”, he reviewed.
The busiest destinations
Particularly, among the main destinations, Mar del Plata was distinguished as the main destinationwhile in Pinamar occupancy in the first half of January averaged 92.5%, with an average stay of 4 days in hotels and 5.9 in other types of accommodation.
In Patagonia, Bariloche received 150,000 tourists in the first half of January alone, and very good occupancy rates were also recorded in destinations on the coast (especially Las Grutas and Playas Doradas) and in the mountains (with El Bolsón, San Martín de los Andes and Villa La Angostura).
Later, They are followed by the towns of Merlo, Colón, Puerto Iguazú and Mendoza, while by region, the mountains of Córdoba, the Entre Ríos coast and Cuyo, stand out. according to official data.
The main attraction stands out the falls with an occupation in Misiones averaged 85% of the hotel beds in the first fortnight, registering 70,500 income in those 15 days, with an arrival of 65 thousand national and foreign tourists.
Later, Between rivers 400 thousand tourists arrived only in the first half of January with occupancy levels that reached peaks of 95% in Colón, 98% in Federación, 99% in Gualeguaychú and 93% in Concepción del Uruguay, the survey indicates.
In this way, both the municipalities and the private sector became one of the “main” engines of these results, adds the survey.
international tourists
The other data to highlight is the presence of international tourists that registered more than 300 thousand people, especially from Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Chile and the United States.
“The accommodations consulted highlighted the presence of tourists from the border and from all over the world such as Germany, Canada, China, Colombia, Spain, the US, France, the Netherlands, England, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Switzerland and Ukraine, among others. “.
Regarding the average stay, the report reveals that this 2023 was slightly lower than summer 2022 (4.2 days vs. 4.6 days last year), possibly due to the increase in daily spending, which averaged $9,035 this year, 26.4%, removing the inflation effect.
For his part, Aerolíneas Argentinas transported more than one million passengers in the first month of the seasonregistering an average of 250 departures and more than 33,000 passengers transferred per day in its network of 38 national destinations, 48 interprovincial routes and 21 international destinations.
Finally, the secretary of the entity stressed that “CAME protects SMEs, which contains them, we are interested in the economic impact that this generates and the spillover that it generates in the regional economies in the interior of the country and in the interior of the interior”.
For the remainder of the summer, Werchow indicated that they expect “the second fortnight to be the same or better”, and added: “the month of February loosens up a bit fundamentally from the 10th for reasons of exams, schools and others, but then it picks up at the end of the month with the carnival, which we are going to measure with the entire season”.
