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🇵🇾 Paraguay /Economy & Trade

Latin American tourism must generate more income for local communities

From ABC Color · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

Newswire Named sources Context piece
  • Experts at the Latin American Green Economy Forum said the region should focus on visitor spending and local benefits, not only on increasing arrivals.
  • Tourism arrivals rose 18% in Central America and the Caribbean but fell 1% in South America early this year, while Brazil recorded a record nine million international visitors in 2025.
  • Speakers highlighted infrastructure, support for small businesses and community income as priorities for sustainable tourism, including in Brazil’s Amazon region.

Latin America has the potential to turn tourism into an engine for economic development and environmental conservation, but experts say the region must make tourism benefit local communities more directly.

The central challenge is no longer simply attracting larger numbers of visitors. Juliana Bettini, a senior tourism specialist at the Inter-American Development Bank, said the focus should shift toward “how much stays in the territories” and how tourism can generate benefits for the places tourists visit.

how much stays in the territories

· Juliana BettiniThe Inter-American Development Bank specialist described the main tourism challenge as ensuring that benefits remain in local areas.

That requires an integrated approach, Bettini said. Governments need to invest in basic infrastructure such as roads, while also improving promotion strategies, strengthening businesses and providing technical assistance to small and medium-sized companies.

stay longer, spend more

· Cinthia MarquesThe ONU Tourism specialist said the region should seek greater visitor spending rather than only more arrivals.

Tourism followed global growth trends in the first months of this year, but unevenly. Arrivals increased 18% in Central America and the Caribbean, while South America recorded a 1% decline, partly because it was compared with a particularly strong 2025. Brazil reached a record nine million international tourist arrivals last year, a level that ONU Tourism specialist Cinthia Marques said would be difficult to surpass.

Marques said the region should seek visitors who stay longer and spend more, with money flowing into local communities through locally made products. She identified that as part of Mexico’s strategy. The country received nearly 100 million international visitors last year, according to official figures.

stays in the local communities

· Cinthia MarquesMarques said tourism income should reach local communities through regional products.

The same approach is emerging in Brazil’s Amazon region, where deforestation, illegal mining and farming place heavy pressure on the environment. Gilvan Pereira, a tourism official in Rondônia, said foreign arrivals there rose 63.6% between the first halves of 2024 and 2025, while formal tourism jobs increased by almost 50% between 2020 and 2024. He said protecting the forest requires helping the communities living there generate income, supported by the necessary infrastructure. Brazil also needs better air connections, he said, to make tourism a genuine sustainable-development industry.

to keep the forest standing, we have to think about the communities living within it so they can generate income

· Gilvan PereiraThe Rondônia tourism official linked local livelihoods with Amazon conservation.
About this summary

Originally published by ABC Color in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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