The late great Anthony Bourdain, who visited much of our beloved region while exploring new cuisines and great food, once had a quote that we’ll paraphrase with the following:

“Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you, it should change you…You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something behind.”

We’re big believers here in seeing as much of Latin America (and the world) as possible, and it’s clear that much of the region feels the same, given that total tourism expenditure topped half a trillion dollars last year.

From San Diegans crossing the border for some good Tijuana tacos to people visiting the southern tip of the world in Ushuaia, Argentina, tourism is a booming industry for much of Latin America.

Stacked bar chart comparing domestic vs. international tourism spending across Latin American countries, showing most tourist spending comes from locals | Sources: WTTC, Latinometrics
Most tourist spending comes from locals

Most regional countries clearly still see more economic activity from domestic tourists. Take Brazil, for example, where roughly 95% of tourism spending comes from Brazilian citizens. Evidently, despite all of the Europeans in Ipanema and the Argentines in Buzios, most tourism money remains national for Brazil.

Most South American countries, especially those in the Southern Cone, see similar trends, although Colombia and Ecuador emerge as two interesting exceptions.

With lower domestic tourism and high numbers of tourists from neighboring countries plus farther-off sources such as the United States, these two Andean countries actually have a larger international tourism market, in line more with small Central American and Caribbean countries like Costa Rica, Panama, and the Dominican Republic.

Scatter plot comparing tourism expenditures as a percentage of GDP and total tourism expenditures, highlighting Mexico's high total expenditure despite a moderate GDP percentage | Sources: UN Tourism, WTTC, Latinometrics
How important is tourism to your economy?

Obviously the countries which rely heaviest on tourism tend to have smaller economies overall. But there’s a glaring exception here. While receiving nearly half of all of Latin America’s total tourism expenditure, Mexico still sees the sector hover at just about 14-15% of its total economy, comparable to much smaller peers in the area.

Contrast this case to Brazil, the only larger economy in the region, where tourism has roughly half the importance in the national economy owing to factors such as geography and a massive agribusiness sector.

Whether you’re island-hopping in the Caribbean or catching the next one-way flight to Lima, we love to see more of the world discovering all our region has to offer. May Latinos appreciate Latin America—and may the world appreciate Latin America.