Until July, Bolivia received 332,436 foreign tourists, about a quarter of the visitors who arrived in the country in 2019, when around 1.2 million visitors arrived in Bolivian lands, according to a report by the Bolivian Institute of Foreign Trade (IBCE).
According to the IBCE report, Bolivia, after the global health crisis, has not managed to reach the million foreign tourists that it obtained in previous years. Between January and July 2022, the arrival of visitors exceeded 300 thousand people.
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Despite being still well below pre-pandemic levels, tourism in the country has rebounded, since in the first half of the year the number of visitors who arrived in the country in 2021 was already exceeded, when 179,906 foreign visitors arrived.
According to the IBCE, the main destinations of tourist spending last year were: food, transportation and accommodation. The receiving income from tourism in the last two administrations did not exceed US$200 million, meaning a level well below what was registered before the pandemic, but it is expected that there will be a rebound in this administration.
The information presented by the IBCE is in line with what was previously exposed by the Monetary Policy report, issued by the Central Bank of Bolivia (BCB), which shows that, although tourist activity from January to May 2022 presented a recovery, “it is still below pre-pandemic levels.”
Last month, on the occasion of the celebration of World Tourism Day, the president of the Bolivian Association of Travel and Tourism Agencies (Abavyt), Marco Mercado, proposed three measures to double the arrival of tourists to the country, these measures are: the reduction of the Value Added Tax (VAT) for tourists, better air connections and the promotion of Bolivia as a tourist destination abroad.
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