Cusco in crisis. At the end of the third quarter of 2023, the accumulated flow of tourists to Machu Picchu fell 8% and reached its lowest levels in 2011, especially due to the departure of natural travelers from Chile, reported the Peruvian Institute of Economics (IPE). Losses would be around S/460 million.
According to the IPE Public Policy Manager, Víctor Fuentes, this historic setback, which responds to social conflicts and public management problems, could be replicated in 2024, after the year began with an indefinite strike in the Imperial City.
According to preliminary figures, compared to pre-pandemic levels, 1.9 million international tourists to our country remain to be recovered. Among them, more than half correspond to visitors from Latin America, particularly Chile: half a million.
“Tourism is one of the few economic sectors in Peru that has not recovered its pre-pandemic levels. Unlike other activities that had a rebound in 2021, that year was worse for Peru than in 2020 due to the very harsh quarantine. The external context was not favorable either,” he reported to La República.
More than half of the tourists who do not arrive are from Latin America. If we disaggregate the 4.37 million tourists who arrived in Peru in 2019, 27% came from Chile (1.2 million).
By 2023, the total supply of tourists fell to 2.52 million until September, and visitors from the neighboring country to the south did not exceed 594,000, a reality that was repeated by those from the US, Ecuador and Colombia, among others.
“It is not understood how in the middle of the 21st century they intend to continue selling tickets at the door, it is not clear in which of the other 6 wonders of the world it is done this way. This also ends up affecting other regions, such as Lima or Arequipa, whose visitors stop in Cusco,” says Fuentes regarding the controversy between the Ministry of Culture and the Joinnus company.
IPE points out that Chilean tourists chose to travel to safer destinations. At the beginning of 2023, Peru fell in the ranking of the main travel destinations among Chileans due to social conflict. Machu Picchu was the favorite place.
Indeed, in the first quarter of 2023, Peru went from third to fifth place in preference for Chilean tourists compared to the same period in 2019, although it showed improvement in the last quarter of the same year.
Finally, Fuentes points out that, although the dynamics in Cusco improved during the second half of 2023, “it was insufficient to compensate for the losses at the beginning of the year”, so a cost of at least S/460 is estimated – very conservatively – millions.
“The tourism market is very competitive. Goals you don’t score, goals you score,” he says.
Source: Larepublica
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