Europeans will take a little longer to regain confidence in the Latin American market due to the complexity of vaccination programs and their delay in these countries.
Fausto Triana
Therefore, the tourism [industry] will take time to recover the movement of travellers abroad, especially to Latin America.
This is the opinion of Gustavo Egusquiza, an expert on the subject who spoke exclusively to PL.
Graduate of Edinburgh University and Oxford University, travel writer and expert in luxury tourism, he believes that in the next few years, the tourism industry will face major changes such as the irruption of artificial intelligence and digitalisation. “This is the perfect time to rethink the strategies in the tourism industry and prepare for the upcoming changes”, he says, reflecting on the future of the industry for popular destinations such as Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Costa Rica and the Caribbean in general.
“Latin American countries will have to make an effort to increase the speed of vaccination of the population as soon as possible if they want to regain the confidence to travel to this region and implement more preventive measures as well as image campaigns abroad”, he argues.
Egusquiza points out that to date, on average only one in six inhabitants of the continent have been fully vaccinated.
He explains that tourists are becoming more and more aware of sustainability and environmental protection, therefore tourism companies will have no choice but to adapt their strategies to these new changes and demands.
On aviation, he believes that “we’re talking about the tourism crisis, but not so much about the airline crisis”.
He explains that for more than a year and a half, all world’s airlines have experienced a drastic drop in passenger traffic, cancelling routes and flights in many countries.
“Airlines like Latam Airlines or Avianca Holdings have declared bankruptcy. At the same time, governments such as Spain’s have introduced a new tax that will tax airlines operating domestic flights [within the country]”, he notes.
He predicts that short-haul flights will become more expensive in the coming years and travelling abroad will be more costly over the next few years.
Egusquiza stresses the need to implement a new strategy that will define “what kind of tourism we want to receive and how we are going to redirect our business model”. (PL)
(Translated by Cristina Popa – Email: gcpopa83@gmail.com) – Photos: Pixabay
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