According to the Brazilian Ministry of Tourism, 400 thousand foreign tourists arrived in the country during the recent Carnival period, injecting R$ 11.4 billion into the economy, in addition to 10.7 million national tourists. The president of the national tourist board Embratur, Vinicius Lummertz, highlighted the importance of e-visa thanks to which increased number of tourists came from the United States, Canada, Australia and Japan.
The president of Embratur regards the electronic visa as an important step in the strategy of internationalization of tourism in Brazil. The expectation of the U.S. Tour Operators Association is to double the number of American tourists who visit Brazil with e-visa. The same is valid for other countries, which already have the electronic visa.
The President of the Brazilian Association of Hotels (ABIH), Manoel Linhares, said that the e-visa will simplify the inflow of tourists from the US and other countries to Brazil. “Without a doubt, the tendency is to increasingly enhance the entry of Americans".
During the parade of samba schools of Grupo Especial, in Rio de Janeiro, the president of Embratur welcomed the very first group of 74 Australians who applied for the e-visa. He considered them to be a “beautiful sample” of the relevance of this action. The vice-president of the Australian Hospitality Association, Lyn Humphreys, declared that the measure was seen as positive by the Australians, who needed to endure long journeys to reach the country’s Brazilian consulates, and now they can manage to get visa on the Internet in just 72 hours, something that used to take 2 months.
On the other hand, Embratur proclaimed that there are other projects in the National Congress to boost Brazilian tourism. Céus Abertos is one of them – it expands the number of flights from the United States to Brazil per week; the liberalization of airlines to welcome foreign investments is another project to increase the country’s competitiveness; and the transformation of Embratur into an independent agency, so that it can compete with more agility in the world market is also planned.
“We need to invest more to attract international tourists. That is something that countries of the whole world do," Vinicius Lummertz recalled. He emphasized the importance of an enhanced aerial connectivity and a lowering of prices based on competition. “A greater aerial connectivity will guarantee more flights on a regular basis and tends to lower the prices, mainly in a more competitive Brazil, which has a huge tourism potential”.
A next step, according to Lummertz, will be to open the Chinese market to Brazilian tourism. China is currently the largest investor in Brazil and its largest trading partner. The goal is to increase the number of tourists from China. From the total of 120 million Chinese tourists who travel the world, Brazil only welcomes 55.000.
According to Lummertz, Brazil has a share of 1% in international trade and only 0.7% in global tourism. To increase both, he indicated that tourism and travels are the way to go, based on the improvement of airports and a higher number of investments.