Hunting for dollars: what measures the Government and the provinces took to recover foreign tourists

In recent days, the national government decided to reopen seven new safe corridors to restore the circulation of regional tourists in Argentina. After two difficult years for the tourism industry, 2022 seems to be the year of recovery, with many countries around the world with high rates of vaccination and low levels of new infections, international transfers are once again possible, and above all, safer.

The province of Corrientes will once again have the possibility of receiving foreigners through the Doctor Fernando Piragine Niveyro International Airport, and through the Puerto Alvear (Argentina) — Puerto Itaquí (Brazil) border crossing. In addition to this, they requested the removal of entry quotas in the safe corridors that were already enabled, Paso de los Libres - Uruguayana and Santo Tome - Sao Borja.

On the other hand, in Catamarca, the San Francisco border crossing was opened, linking Las Grutas with Copiapó, in Chile. Similarly, several safe corridors were set up in Misiones, including Comandante Andresito — Capanema (Brazil); Puerto Panambi — Porto Vera Cruz (Brazil); Puerto Eldorado — Puerto Mayor Julio Otaño (Paraguay); and Puerto Rico — Puerto Triunfo (Paraguay).

With these accesses rehabilitated after the pandemic, Argentina is preparing to welcome tourists from the region again, since although the summer season was a success internally, there is still a need to recover the receptive flow, both regionally and from the rest of the world.

In pursuit of this objective, the Ministry of Transport agreed with 6 countries in the region to reactivate long-distance bus services distance. As detailed by this media, the last country to sign such an agreement was Bolivia, joining the borders of Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil and Chile; and Peru, another important country in the Southern Cone. “The goal is to encourage the arrival of tourists and achieve substantial progress for the sector, we already have regular circulation with all our neighbors, which opens up more opportunities for tourism, for work and for strengthening our international ties,” said Minister Alexis Guerrera.

The need to recover the arrival of foreign tourists is also reflected in the latest INDEC (National Institute of Statistics and Censuses) report on international tourism. According to their statistics, a total of 122,100 world travelers arrived in January 2022 - 93.1% through Ezeiza and Aeroparque - while in January 2020, before the health crisis broke out, some 283,842 did so.

In other words, there is still a need to recover 56.9 percent of the flow of receptive tourism that was registered before the pandemic. The context seems to be the ideal one for this to happen gradually, more and more countries in the world are beginning to relax their restrictions, such was the case of United Kingdom, which directly removed all health requirements related to Covid-19, or that of New Zealand, which again allowed the inflow of vaccinated tourists.

In this regard, in recent hours international airlines operating in the country began to report confirmed flights for the second quarter of the year, between April 1 and June 30. Almost all of them maintain the same frequency as they operated during the first three months, but others, such as Turkish Airlines or Gol, increased the number of flights.

The first will have 4 weekly flights between Istanbul and Buenos Aires -with a stopover in Sao Paulo-, while the Brazilian airline will start flying once a day between Rio de Janeiro and the Metropolitan Airport. Another company that will maintain a daily flight is Aeromexico, between Mexico City and Ezeiza.

For its part, KLM will have one flight per day from Amsterdam and Air France, 6 per week from Paris. Meanwhile, American Airlines confirmed that it will fly twice a day from Miami, once from New York and three times a week from Dallas.

While for the time being at the country's border entrances it is still required that travelers present their full vaccination certificate, fill out a migration affidavit - the only requirements for those coming from neighboring countries - show the negative result of a PCR test done within 72 hours prior to entry, a second antigen test is carried out on entry and that they have travel medical insurance, it is possible that in this context in which airlines around the world ask to fly to Argentina, inbound tourism will continue to recover during the year.

It is still a long way from recovering pre-pandemic levels, but with good management of the health crisis and the effective promotion of Argentina as a tourist destination, the country will once again position itself as a point of international interest in the world, and the tourism industry will continue on the road to recovery, after one of the worst crisis of its history.

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