Brazils Hopes to Draw Eyes on Own Cultural Values, Too

Tourists traveling to Brazil tell the country apart for its shoreline, its world-class carnival and top-notch soccer. But few people know the huge diversity this country has to offer. That’s the opinion of Brazilian Tourism Minister Walfrido dos Mares Guia.

An exposé of the South American nation’s potentials was displayed at the recently concluded World Travel Market in London, where Brazilian authorities coupled the more traditional sun-and-sand offers with such new cultural values as baroque architecture, music, dancing, painting and handicrafts.

With 52 exhibitors from both public and private institutions, Brazil was one of the highlights of the London WTM that featured 5,000 stands and representatives from 190 countries.

The administration of President Lula da Silva is bent on turning tourism into one of the country’s major economic engines, a reason why Brazil now counts on a Tourism Ministry and has jacked up budgetary money for travel promotion from $12 million to $50 million in a single fiscal year.

The so-called Baroque Trail includes grand tours around world-heritage cities like Salvador and Olinda, and the former seaport of Parati, south of Rio de Janeiro, whose glorious pinnacle came to pass in the 17th and 18th centuries when Portuguese settlers used that pier to dispatch gold shipments to Europe.

In addition to museums and baroque music, Brazil is also interested in selling sport tourism through the promotion of beach volleyball, soccer and car racing.

“Ecotourism,” Mr. Mares noted, “is another sector now in expansion, especially in terms of sport fishing, nautical activities and scuba diving.”

Brazil, a country that lost a million visitors to the 2001 Argentinean economic crisis, has mapped out an array of tourism goals to be achieved into 2007. For instance, the country is planning to crack the nine-million-tourist plateau and reap some $8 billion by the end of that year, two milestones the giant nation has never achieved.

Last but not least, Brazil wants to spur up domestic traveling as well and create over a million new jobs in the sector by raising the quality of travel offers in each and every of the nation’s 27 provinces.