More than half of the tourists who came to Brazil in 2016 were South Americans:
from 6.6 million, 2.3 million came from Argentina, followed by the United
States (570,000), Paraguay (316,700), Chile (311,800) and Uruguay (284,100). In
Europe, the country that contributed most to the influx of visitors was France,
with only 263,700 tourists. This information, from the Statistical Yearbook of
the Ministry of Tourism, reinforces the need for Brazil to take effective
measures to expand its tourist flow, increasing the importance of the activity
in the national economy.
"Today, Brazil receives fewer visitors annually than the small island of
Ischia in Italy, which is only 46.3 square kilometers. We are losing ground to
world tourism and wasting our great natural vocation for lack of simple
measures, capable of boosting Brazil as a world destination," says
Alexandre Sampaio, president of the Brazilian Federation of Lodging and Food
(FBHA).
For the entity, which represents more than 940 thousand establishments in the
hospitality and gastronomy sectors, the exemption of tourist visas from
economically attractive places with low-risk immigrant backgrounds, such as the
United States, Canada, Australia and Japan, would be a lever for increasing the
arrival rates of international visitors in Brazil. The estimate, with the visa
release only for these four countries, is a 25% increase in the flow of these
tourists.
In the period of the Olympic Games, 15% of the 6.6 million visitors were
tourists of the four nationalities that were exempted from visa to enter the
country. Once in Brazil, this group left US$ 167.7 million in the national
economy.
Another measure with high revenue-generating potential for the economy is the regulation
of hotel-casinos, a topic that is included in the bill that’s been negotiated
for years in the National Congress. The regulation of this economic activity
has the potential to inject about US$ 4,75 billion per year in the economy, including
revenues, wages and taxes, and to generate around 400,000 jobs and increase the
tourism potential of counties.
"Las Vegas receives more than 40 million tourists a year from casinos,
almost 10 times more than Brazil usually receives per year. Of these, an
average of 350,000 are Brazilians traveling abroad to play, and spend close to
US$ 5,4 million in gaming, only in Las Vegas. These visitors could be spendig
in our establishments and in our tourism," says Sampaio.
