Colombia – New “boom destination” in South America
In recent years, Colombia has become increasingly attractive to international and German tourists. The German market alone saw a 39 percent increase in tourist arrivals to this multifaceted South American country in 2011. In the list of results by destination for 2011, published last March by the magazine Travel One, the country thus took joint first place together with Myanmar. The total number of German visitors to Colombia in 2011 was 41,166, compared with 29,547 in 2010. The main reasons for the increase in tourist numbers, apart from the improved image, include the direct Lufthansa flight introduced in 2011, increased marketing, greater media presence and the fact that more and more tour operators are offering Colombia packages. Internationally, the frequency of direct flights to Colombia increased by 130 percent between 2000 and 2010. There are meanwhile several direct flights a week to the country from all important markets on all five continents. Furthermore, 2011 saw the launch in Germany of an e-learning course aimed at improving knowledge of Colombia as a destination.
This positive trend continued accordingly in 2012. 42,423 German tourists visited Colombia last year, corresponding to an increase of 3.1 percent compared with 2011. All in all, the number of international tourist arrivals in Colombia was up 7 percent to 1,692,822 in 2012, compared with 1,582,110 international tourist arrivals in the previous year. The most important source markets are South America and North America, accounting between them for 70.9 percent of all international tourist arrivals in Colombia.
The five most important countries from which tourists arrived in 2012 were the United States with 319,202 arrivals, the neighbouring countries of Venezuela (250,404) and Ecuador (114,546), Argentina (111,555) and Spain (94,805). While the European market, accounting for a total of 19 percent of all tourist arrivals in Colombia, was the region recording the greatest growth in 2011 (15.5 percent), the number of European tourists arriving in 2012 rose by 3.4 percent from 305,693 to 316,222. In 2012, it was the source markets of Asia, including Japan, China, South Korea and India, that saw the greatest growth (17.2 percent).
Income from the tourism sector for the 12 months to September 2012 totalled USD 3.2 billion, up 2 percent for the same period in 2011. This puts the tourism sector in third place in terms of foreign currency revenue, behind petroleum and carbon.
Berlin, March 2013
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