Paraguay’s Tourism Posts Good First-Half Numbers

During the first seven months of this year, Paraguay’s travel industry registered a whopping 36 percent increase from the same period of time in 2003 as nearly a million travelers (996,096) entered the South American nation.

Would the current trend remain unchanged for the rest of the year, the country could well exceed the numbers of tourist arrivals chalked up in 2003 and 2002 when 1.5 and 1.3 million trekkers respectively visited the country, the nation’s Tourism Ministry reported his week.

Argentina continues to be the top sending nation with a 40.8 percent share of the market between January and July this year, and an overall 73.5 percent of the final annual tally with 732,128 travelers.

With a fifth of the market in the bag, Brazil is the runner-up in number of tourist arrivals. Chile and Uruguay come next with 14.7 and 7.9 percent, respectively.

Officials from the travel sector are upbeat about the good numbers posted by the local industry at a time when there are more airlines operating in the country and summertime bookings spiked from 50 percent in 2003 to a staggering 80 percent this time around.