Find in Panama

Panama is situated in the southern part of the Central America. It is a small country but has a huge potentiality for tourism. Turquoise blue sea-water, virgin beaches, lush green forests – all make the country a paradise on earth. As everybody can well guess, Panama was getting much attention in the tourism sector. But all on a sudden, the prospect of tourism seems gloomy.
In 2007, Jorge Loazia, the President of Panama Hotel Association mentioned that most of the hotels in Panama are making large scale arrangements for accommodation of ever growing numbers of tourists. Most of the hotels were experiencing 98% occupancy in the week days which became 100% during the weekends. During the first four months in 2007, the total number of foreign tourists visited Panama was more than 390,000. It was 9.8% increase what they welcomed during the same period in 2006. More than 200 cruises ferried 28,000 tourists in the Panama.
But these promises have experienced a setback nowadays. The tourism department of the government of Panama cannot conceal the fact that the tourism industry has suffered from a blow from the beginning of this year. According to La Prensa, a leading internet information source about Panama, the air traffic became less 7.3 per cent in February and 4.4 per cent in March than that of previous year. This is the data collected from the regular flights from Guatemala, Panama City and Madrid operated by Iberia Airlines. The cumulative decline in number of incoming tourist volume is not officially available from the government of Panama. But it is well anticipated that the ratio will be more than 10 percent. According to the Association of Hotels in Panama, the hotel occupancy rate has decreased to 6-10 per cent during the same period. The President of Panamanian Association of Tour Operators, Ana Royo has commented that “May has always been a bad month, but this year is expected to be horrible.” The voice of the President of Chambers of Tourism of Panama, Jaime Campuzano also seconds the fact that the booking of hotel rooms, air travel and tours has taken a downward shift. Depending upon the total number of reservations made till now and the number of cancellation till date, it is presumed that the shortfall will be more dramatic during the last quarter of the year. MD of Pesantez Tours Enrique Pesantez observed that there has been greatest turndown of booking orders from Venezuela and Mexico and from whole of the Europe as well.
As an outfall of the global meltdown, tourism in Panama is also suffering from similar setback. Panama Canal is the main route for US bound ships. It also caters major portion of the export route from the US. But the canal has experienced 3.3 percent decline in tonnage transport 1.4 percent reduction in the numbers of ship during the first quarter of this year. Although the canal officials anticipated this decline, it hampered the tourism industry severely.
Most of the countries around the world have suffered from some degrees of global economic recession. Time has come for the hoteliers of Panama to build a modified and uniform plan of tourism