http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/americ...eut/index.html
Colombia pushes international tourism
Monday, August 1, 2005; Posted: 9:15 p.m. EDT (01:15 GMT)
BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) -- To hear Colombia's minister of tourism tell it, conditions are ripe for a major push to attract foreign tourists to a country better known for drugs, wars and kidnapping than for its beaches, mountains and virgin forests.
Things are looking up in Colombia, according to Jorge Humberto Botero, who also holds the commerce and trade portfolios in the government of President Alvaro Uribe.
After the success of what he termed Phase I in tourism development, now is the time to move to Phase II.
Phase I was meant to boost domestic tourism and featured "touristic caravans," or convoys of dozens of cars escorted by 120-strong contingents of police and military, bristling with assault rifles and machine guns along roads considered unsafe because of guerrilla activity.
Most of the roads to vacation spots are safe, Botero said, the result of a series of offensives since Uribe took power in 2002, which pushed the guerrillas back from towns and cities.
"Now the conditions are in place to make a big effort to attract foreign tourists," Botero said. "We have beach resorts on the Caribbean, we have virgin jungle in the Amazon and along the Pacific, we have high mountains in the Andes," he said in a recent interview.
What Colombia does not have is an image that might persuade foreigners to visit Latin America's fourth-largest country and one of its most ecologically and geographically diverse.
Guidebooks invariably refer to Colombia as a land of myths and magic. They rarely fail to mention that it spawned Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude," the masterpiece of a literary genre known as magic realism.
Colombia has a lot of catching up to do. Government figures show that it had just over 1.7 million visitors in 2003. Mexico, in comparison, attracts around 19 million tourists a year and France 80 million.
Holding back foreign visitors are fears for their safety because of a war which is now in its 42nd year and involves the armed forces, two left-wing guerrilla groups, right-wing paramilitary forces, several private armies and the peasants who grow coca leaf and opium poppy, the plants from which cocaine and heroin are made.
Dark image
That has all conspired to give the country a dark image. But, said Botero, "All the figures show that we have made notable advances in improving security. Even the U.S. government's travel warning reflects that."
He was referring to U.S. Department of State advisories about countries it considers dangerous. The latest on Colombia, in May, said "violence by narcoterrorist groups and other criminal elements continues to affect all parts of the country, urban and rural. No one can be considered immune on the basis of occupation, nationality or any other factor."
The warning, however, also noted that violence had decreased markedly in the cities of Bogota, Medellin, Barranquilla and Cartagena. "They (the U.S.) modified the warning in a positive sense," said Botero, referring to a previous blanket recommendation not to go to Colombia at all.
The government takes pride in statistics which show that murders have declined by 34 per cent and kidnappings by 56 per cent since 2002. According to international figures, that still leaves Colombia at the top of the world league for kidnappings and near the top for murders.
But safety for tourists is relative. Without using the words tsunami or bomb attack, Botero said Colombia might benefit from the fears inspired by the devastating Indian Ocean floods which killed more than 170,000 people last Christmas and the coordinated blasts last month in the London subway and bus system which killed 50.
So far, Colombia has done little to portray itself as a tourist destination. At least in the United States, Juan Valdez, the mustachioed farmer in commercials for Colombian coffee, is better known than Cartagena, the historic Caribbean port city on the U.N.'s list of world heritage sites.
Botero described the tourism ministry's promotion budget as "small and utterly insufficient." Hotels and restaurants are supposed to make compulsory contributions to a fund for advertising, but the minister admitted that this had not been properly enforced.
Botero said airlines and companies running toll roads leading to tourist destinations should also pay into the fund.
"Colombia can't even put up a good stand at an international tourism fair," he said. "If we want foreign tourists to come, we need to increase tourism promotion."
The government places its hopes for increased tourism on Latin America and Europe, particularly Spain, the leading foreign investor in Colombia. Botero is sure that once Colombia and the United States sign a free trade agreement, more U.S. business executives will visit to conclude deals.
"It will be relatively easy to turn these business travelers into tourists," he said.