2023-09-25 08:00:00
The number of tourists arriving in Bariloche continues to rise sharply and exceeds the records of 2022, which had already been considered a historic year because the barrier of one million visitors fell for the first time. But according to the statistical reports for the first semester, the most surprising fact is the disappearance of the low autumn season.
The report released by the municipality indicates that this year between January and June the city received 494,977 visitors, 14.3% more than last year. Although the month-by-month breakdown allows for more precise conclusions and shows that the high summer season almost repeated the 2022 numbers (just 2.8% higher), while the April/June period was the best in living memory, with a year-on-year increase of 36.3%.
Traditionally, the tourism sector had assumed that the month of May was the weakest month of the year and many hotels and bungalows took advantage of it to close, carry out renovations and furlough their staff. That habit began to disappear because billing levels more than justify keeping the supply available.
The hotel occupancy rate in May of this year was an unexpected 39%, when in previous years it fluctuated between 15 and 20%.
The Minister of Tourism of Río Negro, Diego Cannestraci, told RÍO NEGRO Diary that biased analyzes must be avoided and it is advisable to take longer series, but he admitted that there is “a consolidated trend” of mitigation of low seasons, which Bariloche shares with all mountain destinations.
He said that this city was favored in that sense by the greater air connectivity. Cannestraci pointed out that the flight offer grew by 20% during the summer compared to the same period in 2022, but as of June that number was even higher, up to 25%.
He also pointed out that last fall the largest arrival of tourists was explained by the “XXL” weekend in mid-June. He stated that there are visible changes in the tourism market at a general level and in Bariloche there is also a tendency to “deseasonalize short-term trips, which occurs throughout the world.”
Cannestraci said that another modality installed is that travelers “shorten definition times,” meaning that if they detect an opportunity they decide and hire a few days in advance, something that was very rare before. The trend towards remote work also influences, which allows planning trips without having to take vacations.
These factors, added to the benefits of the Pre-Trip that the national government implemented, are the main ones that contributed to relativizing the drops in demand in the low seasons.
Demonstrated improvement
According to the tourist statistics section published by the municipality. This year every month – between January and June – the figures improved compared to last year. But in the first quarter the increase was not significant. 292,537 people arrived in the city between January and March, when in 2022 there had been 284,509.
However, starting in April the differences widened noticeably. In May, for example, Bariloche received 56,399 visitors when last year there had been 38,189. An improvement of 47.6%.
The numbers from that witness month are very revealing to understand the change in trend. While this year more than 56,000 people traveled to Bariloche in May, in the ten years prior to the pandemic the average for that month was only 19,900 visitors.
One caveat to consider is that the number of overnight stays did not grow in the same proportion. While in the first half of 2022 the entire accommodation offer in the city sold 2,012,979 bed nights, this year there were only 1,970,032. A drop of 2.1% explained by the shortening of average stays.
The foreign market is also growing
Another section to follow closely is the arrival of tourists from abroad, which had a much slower post-pandemic recovery than national tourism and which still remains far from the proportions of two decades ago.
This year, in the first half of the year, Bariloche had 21.6% of visitors from foreign origin, divided between 12.4% from neighboring countries and 9.2% from the rest of the world. In 2022 the total had been only 10.6% (7.3% bordering and 3.1 from the rest).
The numbers are already above those registered in 2019 – the last before the pandemic – when in the first semester 17.4% of tourists in Bariloche were “non-Argentine”.
But the maximum record is still far away. In 2006, a record year in this regard, the city received 289,000 tourists from abroad, 36.6% of the total. Of them, 168,000 came from neighboring countries.
Cannestraci said that foreign tourism “is growing a lot” and highlighted, for example, the influx from the northern hemisphere and especially from the United States. He said that that country is already ranked second in “searches” registered via the web, behind Brazil.
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