The summer season begins with good signs and optimism facing a new harvest for sun and beach tourism on the Uruguayan coasts. At this time, the first Argentine and Brazilian travelers are already seen in Maldonado, but as is traditional, the flow of foreign visitors and also Uruguayans is expected to increase during the next week after the Christmas holiday.
After two summers marked by the covid-19 pandemic, sanitary restrictions and border closures that caused a sharp drop in a key activity for the country’s economy, the scenario returned to normal.
In that context, The Center for Economic Research (Cinve) projects that between December 2022 and March 2023 the number of Argentine visitors arriving in the country would be around 890,000 people, and the number of Brazilians would be slightly below 200,000 at that time. period. These projections suggest that the figures prior to the pandemic would not yet be fully recovered. In the case of Argentina, the data would show 1% less than the 2019-2020 summer seasonand the flow of Brazilian tourists could be at levels similar to that season, he explained.
The president of the Punta del Este Promotion and Tourism League, Santiago Osácar told The Observer that there are “very good expectations” mainly due to the presence of foreign owners, especially Argentines, who had not been able to come as long as they wanted in the last two years. Most of the Argentine owners usually spend the first party in their country and arrive to spend the end of the year in Uruguay.
Marcelo Umpierrez
In addition, he stressed that there are “many requests” for events and private parties in different places in Punta del Este. “All these companies that are committed to holding events also do so with the reference of a high volume of people that is expected. Until the first fortnight it will be a very good season”, he remarked.
For his part, the president of the Rochense Tourism Corporation, Delvair Amarillastated that a first impression suggests that there is already “more movement” than the previous season, but there is still some uncertainty given that reservations in resorts such as Punta del Diablo, La Pedrera, Cabo Polonio and La Paloma occur with very little anticipation.
“The rise in covid-19 cases causes reservations to slow down and take fewer days, so domestic tourism is also very expectant about what happens with this variant and that it does not play a trick on us like last year” , said to The Observer. This area of the country concentrates mainly Uruguayan tourists. Amarilla added that until January 10 there are places that are between 70% and 80% reserved. “Hopefully it will be better than last season,” he said.
The Center for the Study of Economic and Social Reality (Ceres) pointed out this week that tourist activity will register an increase in the period 2022-23, as well as in subsequent years, but without repeating the excellent performance of 2017 when the number of visitors reached almost 3.8 million.
“Tourism in Uruguay is highly dependent on Argentine visitors who, in addition to managing a devalued currency, have registered a strong loss of real wages, the variable with the highest incidence when traveling,” the study explained.
In this sense, he recalled that the entry of Argentine tourists has been on a downward trend since 2017 as a result of currency devaluations and the drop in the neighboring country’s economy.
