WTM: Panama reports UK visitor boom
(ttglive.com) Panama expects to have doubled last year’s UK arrivals figures by the end of this year.
Last year, 8,000 Britons visited the Central American country; this year, 7,400 had already done so by the summer.
Panama’s tourism sector grew 24% to become the country’s number one industry last year.
Hotel development is proceeding rapidly, fuelled by tax-free inducements until 2015.
In September, there were 104 new hotel projects under way in Panama City alone, and investment in recent years has totalled several billion dollars.
“Investment in real estate and hotels in Panama is more than in Central America and the Caribbean combined,” said Carl-Frederik Nordstrum, deputy general administrator of the Authority of Tourism Panama.
However, he insisted that Panama would not become “another Cancun”.
“We realise we have to control development. The biggest landowners in Panama are the Indian tribes and they know how to look after the land. Our plans have been sanctioned by the World Tourism Organisation,” he said.
The tourism authority invested 30% of its total marketing budget in Europe in 2008, a proportion it plans to repeat in 2009.
Speaking at WTM, Nordstrum said the UK market was particularly important for Panama, with 20% of the properties at the forthcoming Nikki Beach Resort & Residences, for example, having been bought by Brits.
Fam trips for UK agents and operators are planned for 2009
