The city of Buenos Aires opens its cruise tourism season with sustained growth in the segment that allows considering a comeback to normality for the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023. The arrival of 127 cruise ships has been confirmed for this season. This translates into about 350,000 cruise passengers that will leave an estimated daily expenditure per tourist of US $ 90.6.
These numbers imply a growth compared to the 2018-2019 season, when 8% fewer ships called. Of the arriving cruise passengers, more than 70% are international guests and among the main source destinations are Brazil (46%), the United States and Canada (23%), and Europe (17%).
Although the season runs from October to April, the highest proportion of calls will be concentrated between December and March, 90% of the total. At the same time, the arrival of larger ships is expected, since 47% of the calls will be of cruise ships with a capacity for more than 3,000 passengers and vessels with a capacity for more than 2,000 passengers will represent 70% of the calls. Compared to the 2019-20 season, the calls of large vessels increased 9 percentage points in 2022-23.
The city of Buenos Aires continues to rejoice over the reactivation of the tourism sector so far this year, recording the best numbers since the beginning of the pandemic. During the first seven months of 2022, the data surveyed by the Observatory of Ente de Turismo show that the city received more than 2.6 million domestic tourists who left AR$ 18 billion in total expenditure in all areas of the sector, and 721 thousand international tourists who left U$S 489 million in the local economy. At the same time, 93% of the registered employment in all branches of tourism in the City of Buenos Aires was recovered.
As for available hotel vacancies, 77% of those that existed in August 2019 have been recovered, reaching 52.2 thousand total vacancies. The best numbers were seen in 3, 4 and 5-star hotels, where the city counted 98% occupancy of 5-star hotel beds compared to June 2019, 89% of beds for 4-star hotels and 89% of beds in 3-star hotels. During July of this year, almost the same amount of domestic tourists were accommodated as in the same period of 2019: 99% compared to that month. On the other hand, 77% is the number of international tourists who stayed in hotels in July compared to the same month of 2019.
The city of Buenos Aires attractions include a wide variety of cultural, tourist and gastronomic offers; the city has more than 7,000 bars and restaurants, 287 theatres, and 150 museums and it is well known as the Tango Capital of the world.