BRIEFS. tourism

2008 registered record number of visitors

Nearly 1.6 million visitors traveled to Panama last year, according to the country’s tourism authority.

That figure represents an 11 percent increase compared to 2007 and broke the country’s previous record of 1.5 million visitors in a single year, said Jaime Campuzano, president of the Panamanian Chamber of Tourism.

Overall growth within the industry showed a dropoff, however, compared with that of 2006 and 2007, when the country’s tourism sector enjoyed respective increases of 13 percent and 17 percent.

This year, the Chamber of Tourism projects that the number of tourists will continue to grow despite the international crisis, “since markets like Canada, Latin America and those in Scandinavian countries, are behaving very well.”

As a sign of stability within the industry, hotel occupancy rate in Panama City remained at 65 percent last year, equal to the 2007 rate. And hotels in the country with more than 100 rooms reported 79 percent occupancy, also similar to that seen in 2007. The greatest improvement was noted in hotels with fewer than 100 rooms, which had an average occupancy of 45 percent in 2008, or 5 percent more than the previous year.

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