After a second half of 2021 with an increase in revenues by 77% with the resumption concentrated on domestic travel, a summer superseason across the country and the celebration of the full resumption of tourism in the exuberant samba school parades at the carnivals of Rio and São Paulo, I was challenged by some journalists to list the 12 main potentials for the future of Brazilian Tourism at this new moment, after two years of a pandemic that has not yet left us.
With the support of the CIET team, the Tourism Economy Intelligence Center that we created at the Secretary of Tourism and Travel of SP, follows this is the result of the accepted challenge:
1) Natural Parks
2) Brazilian museums
3) Resorts integrated with casinos – The long-awaited approval of the legislation to receive resorts integrated with casinos leads to the feasibility of billions in investments in locations with great potential to be tourist districts and catalysts, replacing the tourist activity of Brazilians abroad.
4) Nationalization of the concept of Tourist Districts
5) International and national promotion with professional standard
6) Infrastructure and urban quality in tourist municipalities
7) Use of historic buildings for hotels or tourist developments
8) Large-scale assisted credit
9) First job in Tourism
10) Portfolio of areas for investment at national level
11) Marinas and tourist ports
12) Sanitation plan for urban tourist edges
It is clear that the planning of these 12 “points for the future” needs to be integrated into a Global Plan for Brazilian Tourism, so that they can be implemented and executed in a harmonious way – and also in synergy with everything that we already have that is good and that is working.
It is past time for Brazil to recognize Tourism as one of its two major competitive advantages in the world, where we position ourselves as number one. The other is Agribusiness, which 40 years ago timidly existed in a food-importing country. But it turned Brazil into the planet's breadbasket because a program was created for that, as we are now pointing out for Tourism: there was internationalization in the production chain, there was credit, there was training, there was intelligence by Embrapa and the integration of production chains.
As the author of the book 'Brazil: World Power of Tourism', I just have to reaffirm this title - and remember that, as long as Tourism is not placed at the center of the country's economic and social agenda, it means a waste of millions of jobs and gigantic public and private investments to improve the quality of life of an entire nation.
Vinicius Lummertz
Secretary of Tourism of the State of São Paulo since 2019. He was Minister of Tourism during the Temer administration, president of Embratur from 2015 to 2018 and National Secretary of Tourism Policies at the Ministry of Tourism from September 2012 to May 2015.
