The Caribbean and Central America will be the subregions most affected by the stagnation in tourism caused by the global financial crisis.
That's the conclusion of a report released in Santiago, Chile, by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). About 75 per cent of tourists to the English-speaking Caribbean, over 40 per cent of those visiting Central America, and more than 75 per cent of tourists to Cuba and the Dominican Republic come from developed economies in recession, according to the report, Preliminary overview of the economies of Latin America and the Caribbean 2008, recently published by ECLAC.
The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) estimates that in 2008, tourism will grow between 2 and 3 per cent, very distant from the 6.6 per cent reached last year. In 2009, it is expected to expand even less, somewhere between 0 per cent and 2 per cent. Tourism began experiencing a strong deceleration between June and August 2008 due to the increasing deterioration of real income and consumer expectations, the volatility of exchange rates, and restraints on consumer loans due to the financial crisis.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, tourism is one of the economic activities that has flourished most in recent years, and its importance has increased as a generator of value-added and income, says the ECLAC report. In the Caribbean, tourism related exports compose about 20 per cent of gross domestic product, while in Central America, it is an average 5 per cent, but reaches nearly 10 per cent in the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Costa Rica.
Tourism expenditures in the English-speaking Caribbean - with the exception of Guyana, Suriname and T&T- are equivalent to 15-41 per cent of GDP. As a proportion of total exports, expenditures are even greater, given that tourism is the main source of income and the motor of these economies.