J
JMBroad
New Member
A while back GW and Surfing offered their opinion that tourism was generally bad in Natal at the moment based on the number of tourists they saw over there during their stay (not sure if Surfing is based in Brazil or not but know GW isn't).
These are the official figures from Infraero - available to the general public. I just have a month by month and year by year comparative analysis so that I can keep track of growth (positive or negative) with regards to the influx of passengers. I also track a bunch of other information gathered from these sheets but for the purposes of answering the question raised by GW and Surfing, the international and domestic arrivals are the most important figures.
So without further ado:
First off, the top 4 (Recife, Salvador, Natal and Fortaleza) represented 83% of all incoming passengers to the Northeast in January 2008. The average remained constant over the past 5 years and they still receive 96% of all international arrivals.
Natal saw 15% less international arrivals in January 2008 when compared to January 2007. So yes, there was a significantly lower number of international arrivals, which is probably why GW and Surfing said that they noticed less tourists around. On the other hand though, there was a 20% increase in domestic arrivals. As the number of domestic arrivals is by far superior to international arrivals, the end result was an overall increase in passenger arrivals of 13%.
Just in case you were wondering, Fortaleza grew -6%, Recife showed a positive growth of 20%, Salvador grew -2% and overall the whole of the Northeast showed a positive growth of 3%
So taking that into consideration we have to ask ourselves why did we see less international arrivals in Natal yet a huge increase in domestic arrivals?
Here is my opinion -
Strength of the Real is very likely a good reason - it would explain why less international arrivals are coming - Natal was originally marketed by the tour operators as a cheap and cheerful destination... with the strengthening of the real, those charter flight tourists on budgets are finding their holidays to be more expensive, therefore less appealing. Rather than a sharp drop in tourist arrivals, I believe we are seeing more of an adjustment of charter tourists vs regular flight tourists which can ultimately be benefitial for the real estate market as cheap package charter flight passengers are potentially less likely to buy property than the regular flight tourists. Unfortunately I don't have access to the breakdown of what % of the passengers arrived on charter flights and how many arrived on regular flights to corroborate my theory so it's just an opinion.
Then again might just be January and in February the numbers will bounce back up again - who knows?
It would also explain the jump in domestic arrivals as the domestic market gains more strength and more spending power - Salvador and Fortaleza combined showed a loss of 43 thousand domestic arrivals while Natal and Recife combined showed a gain of 100 thousand domestic arrivals.
These are the official figures from Infraero - available to the general public. I just have a month by month and year by year comparative analysis so that I can keep track of growth (positive or negative) with regards to the influx of passengers. I also track a bunch of other information gathered from these sheets but for the purposes of answering the question raised by GW and Surfing, the international and domestic arrivals are the most important figures.
So without further ado:
First off, the top 4 (Recife, Salvador, Natal and Fortaleza) represented 83% of all incoming passengers to the Northeast in January 2008. The average remained constant over the past 5 years and they still receive 96% of all international arrivals.
Natal saw 15% less international arrivals in January 2008 when compared to January 2007. So yes, there was a significantly lower number of international arrivals, which is probably why GW and Surfing said that they noticed less tourists around. On the other hand though, there was a 20% increase in domestic arrivals. As the number of domestic arrivals is by far superior to international arrivals, the end result was an overall increase in passenger arrivals of 13%.
Just in case you were wondering, Fortaleza grew -6%, Recife showed a positive growth of 20%, Salvador grew -2% and overall the whole of the Northeast showed a positive growth of 3%
So taking that into consideration we have to ask ourselves why did we see less international arrivals in Natal yet a huge increase in domestic arrivals?
Here is my opinion -
Strength of the Real is very likely a good reason - it would explain why less international arrivals are coming - Natal was originally marketed by the tour operators as a cheap and cheerful destination... with the strengthening of the real, those charter flight tourists on budgets are finding their holidays to be more expensive, therefore less appealing. Rather than a sharp drop in tourist arrivals, I believe we are seeing more of an adjustment of charter tourists vs regular flight tourists which can ultimately be benefitial for the real estate market as cheap package charter flight passengers are potentially less likely to buy property than the regular flight tourists. Unfortunately I don't have access to the breakdown of what % of the passengers arrived on charter flights and how many arrived on regular flights to corroborate my theory so it's just an opinion.
Then again might just be January and in February the numbers will bounce back up again - who knows?
It would also explain the jump in domestic arrivals as the domestic market gains more strength and more spending power - Salvador and Fortaleza combined showed a loss of 43 thousand domestic arrivals while Natal and Recife combined showed a gain of 100 thousand domestic arrivals.
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