August 27, 2010
According to recent reports from national and international surveys, Argentina is seeing an important hotel building boom, which shows a positive reaction of the travel markets back from the global downturn. The southern country has 15 projects in development, which entail 1700 rooms, of which, almost 70% are already in the in-construction phase. These record figures are only surpassed by Brazil which shows, according to the same studies, 51 projects, comprising over 7000 rooms. These remarkable data provides a promising outlook for the South American travel markets. According to HVS-Argentina’s President, Arturo Garcia-Rosa, “the market in South America is going very well”
The studies show that Buenos Aires has been performing extremely well for hotels. The occupancy skyrocketed from 62.5% in July 2009 to 87.3% in July of 2010; while the average daily rate increased by 15.8% and the revenue per available room also jumped from US 83.99 to 116.9% in the same period.
According to Garcia-Rosa, the return of leisure travelers caused Buenos Aires to be featured prominently on several travel magazines. In his words, “Buenos Aires is one of those cities where every year you look at Condè Nast Traveler and it is one of the top ten cities selected for travelers”. He added that there is a strong performance in the luxury segment.
The experts find that South America as a whole held together reasonably well during the downturn and has been showing signs of rapid recovery. Another indicator which is performing very well is the one of the coasts.
Most of the development has come in the way of mixed-use developments. Investors are choosing hotels to anchor their development projects and these development include higher-end properties, especially in Argentina. However, secondary cities are also being targeted. The generally low-cost of land in South America has fueled this boom. According to Mr. Garcia-Rosa, who will preside the South American Hotel and Tourism Investment Conference to be held in Cartagena, Colombia, next September, “real estate developers understand that they can take advantage of hotels” and added that there should be no oversupply concerns, because, in spite of the fact that the new infrastructure figures are high, “the demand is there”
While world tourism in general is still on a slow yet positive recovery from the global financial crisis, it is evident that certain travel destinations like Argentina are seeing an actual investment and development boom, clearly signaling that there are sound expectations for the tourism and travel business to grow significantly in the near future. Meanwhile, the Argentine government and the private tour operators and outfitters are rushing to adapt their promotion and marketing strategies, in order to properly deal with a positive “tsunami” of increased demand, eager to enjoy the cosmopolitan and unique ambiance of a city like Buenos Aires and to enjoy the widely diverse natural regions of the country, from Iguazu to Patagonia; from the Andes to the Atlantic coast…..
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