São Paulo – Brazil reported an important milestone of 868,587 foreign tourists in the first month of 2023. The result is a historical record in the four-year series. The numbers exceeded by over 100,000 people the figure from the last two years before the COVID-19 pandemic when 756,883 (2019) and 750,457 (2020) international visitors entered the country. Compared to January 2022, which had 275,942 tourists, the number almost tripled.
“The world is coming to Brazil again,” wrote President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on his Twitter account this Tuesday (7), referring to the historical tourism record to Brazil.
Throughout 2022, according to information from the Brazilian Federal Police, Brazil received 2.69 million foreign visitors, considering only those who entered as tourists. The number is 55% lower than recorded in 2019, when 4.85 million foreign tourists landed in the country.
In 2022, Brazil had one of the worst global performances in tourism among countries with open borders after vaccination against the coronavirus. The country was behind the average of African and American nations, with an upturn significantly slower than the global average.
Even with China, the world’s most significant source of tourists, maintaining restrictive measures on foreign travel in the past year, the flow of tourists on the planet represented 63% of pre-pandemic levels, according to data from the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). The Middle East, with 83%, and Europe, with 80%, are the continents with the best upturn in international tourism activity.
Translated by Elúsio Brasileiro
