São Paulo – Last year, 6.3 million international tourists visited Brazil, a drop of 1.9% in comparison to 2014, when 6.4 million tourists from abroad visited the country, according to the Statistical Yearbook released this Monday (25) by the Ministry of Tourism. In the ministry’s evaluation, however, this decline doesn’t constitute a trend. In 2014, Brazil hosted the World Cup, an event that produced an atypical influx of visitors.
The director of Economic Studies and Research at the Ministry of Tourism, José Francisco de Salles Lopes, told ANBA that the “ideal” comparison is with 2013, when 5.8 million international tourists visited Brazil. “In 2014, the high number occurred due to the World Cup. Without it, we would have received less than six million tourists. Comparing the 2015 influx to the one from 2013, years that didn’t have an atypical event, the increase registered in 2015 was of 8.5%”, said Lopes.
Still in the evaluation of the research director, overall, Brazil received more tourists from South American countries. “Worldwide, international tourism is inter-regional, that is, the people travelling to a country are those from neighboring or nearby countries. In our case, we received, in 2014, 3.1 million tourists from South America. Last year, there were 3.4 million of visitors or 9.1% more. The number of tourists from Argentina, the country that sends the most tourists to Brazil, reached 2.079 million last year, an increase of 19.2% in comparison to 2014”, he said.
Lopes believes that the World Cup left as a legacy a new standard for the number of tourists. The ministry evaluates that this year, also atypical due to the Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics, the tourist influx to Brazil will be highest ever. However, Lopes doesn’t make a prediction. “We know that it will be the highest ever, a record.”
Main source countries
The main source country of tourists to Brazil in 2015 was Argentina, responsible for 33% of the total of tourists in the country. It is followed by the United States, which sent 586,400 tourists, and Chile, with 250,500 visitors. Paraguay, Uruguay, France, Germany, Italy, England, Portugal, Spain, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Mexico, Venezuela, Switzerland, Japan, Canada and Holland comprise the list of the 20 main sources of tourists to Brazil. The Arab countries don’t appear among the main tourist sources to the country.
The state that received the most tourists last year was São Paulo, followed by Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande do Sul.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
