Latin America Travel Increasingly Popular

Latin America is hot! As the summer holiday season approaches, a recent report by Expedia has short listed a number of tourist hot spots in emerging destinations for this coming summer season. While the old favourites of Paris, London and Paris remain popular with American travellers, it seems that we are entering a new era for tourism in South America, a positive sign for overseas investors into this region.

A number of recent surveys have indicated the growing popularity of hotspots such as Mexico, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic but it currently all eyes are on Paraguay, Peru and Argentina. The Argentine tourist office recently confirmed that US visitor numbers have risen by 35% between 2005 and 2007, with more growth forecast. In line with this growth, we should see greater demand for managed holiday products from luxury beach front resorts to boutique hotels.

While many of the new hot spots in Latin America have seen much development in the infrastructure and property arenas bringing in substantial overseas investment over the last few years, it seems that it is the strength of the dollar against the local currencies has seen most cost conscious US visitors target the region of South America, purely as a cut-price vacation destination. Even though the dollar has fallen sharply of late against a raft of major currencies around the world, including the Euro, it has remained more than competitive against domestic currencies in Argentina and South Africa to name but a couple of examples, making a holiday in Latin America cheaper than the home-grown variety ! As a result and in response to increased demand, property in Argentina and the Panama real estate market are already the focus of overseas investor interest.

The Expedia report also suggested that more and more international travellers are in search of greater value for money with funds not as plentiful as they have been in the past. There are signs that tourists are downgrading their standard of accommodation and even cutting short their vacations by just a few days to save money. How this will affect the traditional tourist destinations in Europe remains to be seen but we are starting to see a shift to destinations which offer better value for money in the global tourism marketplace.

With many international property investors in search of the Next Best Thing, following the investment strategy of the major hotel chains, it will be interesting to see which parts of the Latin American continent are next on the overseas property agenda.