After several months of work, the Committee of Tourism Ministers declared the regions of Lonquimay, the Chiloé Archipelago, Torres del Paine, and Cape Horn as places of interest, adding these to the 32 already listed, totaling 36 regions labeled as tourist attractions in the country.
The measure represents an important tourism promotion tool for certain areas, allowing the productive sector to assume a key role in each region, as well as opening opportunities for the public and private sector while promoting a series of projects with a significant economic and social impact.
“Promoting tourism through the participation and collaboration of the different sectors, through the strengthening of the joint work of the public and private world, as well as the interaction of networks among them, are some of the effects that we seek to spark with the declarations of Areas of Tourist Interest [ZOIT, in Spanish] throughout the country,” said Monica Zalaquett, Undersecretary of Tourism.
The Chilean tourism authority added that “the purpose of the ZOIT decree is to position the regions, giving them priority over others in terms of development, execution and implementation of tourism promotion programs. Our goal is to fuel the tourist potential of destinations, welcoming both tourists and the communities that live there, without losing sight of the characteristics that make these areas unique.”
In order to position the region and its particular conditions, the decree includes the definition of a series of prioritized projects, which may be eligible for public programs and include allocation of resources for infrastructure and equipment.
In this sense, one of the current financing incentives is the PMU-ZOIT agreement, signed by the Under secretariat of Tourism and SUBDERE, exclusively dedicated to municipalities that are part of a ZOIT, which compete to be awarded one of the Programs of Urban Improvement, whose maximum amount is $50 million Chilean pesos per project (approx. USD72,000).