Brazil tourism still ranked low in global visitors

Article Excerpt

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a massive decline in Brazil’s tourism industry as international visitors declined from over 6 million in 2019 to less than 1 million by 2021. But the tourists are now returning with estimates indicating that 6.7 million tourists visited in 2023. Tourism is a sizeable business in Brazil, but it could be much bigger. In fact, the president of Brazil’s tourism board believes that Brazil has the widest gap of any country in the world between tourism potential and what’s actually been achieved. Brazil received an estimated 6.3 million tourists in 2019. That ranked the country at number 61 in the world, far behind top-ranked France or even fifth-ranked Mexico (with 97.4 million visitors). Tourism directly contributed 1.7% of the Brazilian economy and employed about 1.9% of its total workforce. Other countries in Latin America, especially Mexico, Costa Rica, and Chile, receive much larger contributions from tourism to their economies and employment. Brazil ranked 49th out of 117 countries in the 2021…