Well, looking at the big picture, I'm not running for the door just yet.
Growth in international arrivals to Natal from 2003 to 2007 (full year) is still 26% year on year, despite the 12.2% drop last year, with close to 220.000 in 2007 compared to just over 100.000 in 2003. A drop does concern me, but not in a panic just yet.
More concerning to me is that Natal airport is now operating at 121% of official capacity (close to 1.6 mill arrivals - 1.3 mill capacity),Fortaleza at 120% capacity and Salvador at 99% capacity (despite airport capacity being doubled in 2000). Overall the top 4 states airports (which are historically responsible for 97% of international arrivals for the Northeast) are now operating at close to 100% which means growth should slow considerably unless a new airport is built in one of the states sometime soon.
However considering that in August 2007, ytd growth in travel expenditure for Brazil was among the highest global figures, at 33%, it will be interesting to see what that 12% decrease did when looking at ytd tourism expenditure figures. (ie did the 12% less tourists manage to spend more money or less)
Re. SurfingBrazil - Not a major tourist power compared to what?
Compared to Uk, France, Turkey or Italy - You are correct.
Compared to its South American neighbours - Brazil welcomes more tourists each year than Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Venezuela and Suriname combined. The other two larger players in South America, Argentina and Chile, only just beat Brazil when added together. Separately, they don't come close.
Brazil almost welcomes the same amount of International arrivals as Central America. Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama all together welcome less tourists than Brazil. The arrivals in Costa Rica just push the area over Brazil's figures.
Of the whole of the Americas, Brazil welcomes the 4th most amount of tourists, after the US, Canada and Mexico.
However, yes, in comparison to Global figures, Brazil has a long long way to go. Top 25 tourism destinations each receive almost 8 million international arrivals per year. Brazil is still at 5 million, but growth has been almost 10% a year in recent years.
(Source: UNWTO)