Well, it seems the Tourism authority can no longer hide the fact that tourism and business travel is dropping percipiticly over the last three months. According to the article from La Prensa, Hotel occupancies are down 10% or more and there are as many as 14000 new rooms coming on line this year. Looks like we will be seeing much lower hotel rates in the near future. Tour operators are reporting 30% down which is closer to the real number of tourism decline as most travel to Panama is still business.
Excerpts:
While official data does not yet reflect it, tourism-related businesses are noticing a downturn in revenue that is most likely linked to the global recession.
The president of the Chamber of Tourism of Panama, Jaime Campuzano, confirmed that there has been a downturn in demand for hotel rooms, tours, and airline travel.
The hotel occupancy rate, meanwhile, decreased by between 6 percent and 10 percent in April, according to the Panamanian Association of Hotels.
This decline is the first in recent memory, as Panama’s hotel occupancy rate has been extremely high, and the government has offered incentives to add more rooms.
Based on the number of reservations made to date, the impact is expected to be even more dramatic later in the year.
Ana Royo, president of the Panamanian Association of Tour Operators, said that “May has always been a bad month, but this year is expected to be horrible.”
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