Tourists flock to Buenos Aires for New Year celebration

According to the supervision of hotel-reservations that has been required by Buenos Aires Tourism Office a large number of tourists will be coming to the city, especially those from Brazil who have bought packages of 3 or 4 nights to spend in Buenos Aires for New Year’s Eve.

The average of hotel reservations is of 87% for 5-star, 90% for 4-star and 77% for 3-star lodges. Brazil will be the main touristic market in the city followed by the rest of the regional countries among which Chile must be highlighted. European reservations are important too in 4 and 5-star hotels.

“The positioning of great events in the 2011 calendar will turn the City of Buenos Aires into an attraction centre for national and international tourism in the context of the appointment of Buenos Aires as Book Capital 2011. The porteño summer starts with the intense program of Aires Buenos Aires cultura para respirar ( Aires Buenos Aires culture to breath) which summoned in its last edition 2010 more than 350,000 persons from the city and abroad”, said Hernán Lombardi, President of Buenos Aires Tourism Office and Minister of Culture of the City.

Brazilian market shows the most impressive growth during 2010. From January to November almost 800,000 Brazilian tourists visited the City of Buenos Aires. Their share as regards the total amount of international tourists in the City is of 34%.

Compared to the same period in 2009, the growth of visits of Brazilian tourists to the City of Buenos Aires was of 86.36% and compared to 2008, of 34.30%.

The Brazilian cities that will bring more tourists to Buenos Aires are Sao Pablo, Río de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte. In the last weeks the most important journalistic Media of those cities showed in several pages recommendations to spend New Year’s Eve in Buenos Aires like the magazine Veja that in their front page headed with “Shopping in Buenos Aires” followed by an extensive interview of 12 pages, or the Touristic Supplement of Folha de Sao Paulo with 6 pages and a front page article.

In the city of Belo Horizonte the newspaper Estado de Minas also recommended the City of Buenos Aires as a touristic destination to celebrate New Year’s Eve. Likewise, a journalistic team of tv programme Sem Malas of O Globo channel made an especial production that will be released shortly.

Furthermore, Brazilian Editing House Abril, that launched in September the guide Quatro Rodas in the City of Buenos Aires 2011, announced that is the most successful product in sales of the editing group. It is the first time Quatro Rodas publishes a guide that is not a Brazilian destination.

The total number of international arrivals to Ezeiza and Aeroparque during November 2010 was of 2697. Brazil was the country that registered the highest number of fights: 905, followed by Uruguay and Chile. The cities of Sao Pablo, Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte were those who registered more flight frequency with 477, 169 and 91 flights respectively. Flight reservations to Buenos Aires in those cities of Brazil to spend New Year’s Eve here reach the highest levels.

Favoured by the money exchange, purchases are still one of the favourite activities for Brazilian tourists in the City. The growth of Brazilian purchases through “tax free shopping” during the January/November period of 2010/2009 represented a strong improvement of 122% followed by Uruguay with 43% and Chile with 36%.

The volume of purchases of tourists is influenced by the level of competitiveness of prices of Buenos Aires, related to which an improvement of 1.58% was observed during October 2010, compared to the same period in 2009. For the Uruguayan market the improvement was of 2.75% and for the Chilean one of 7.04%.