Campaign to Beef Up Guatemala’s Travel Industry Gets Underway

The Guatemala Tourism Institute will set going a new national blitz aimed at developing and strengthening its own travel sector, the country’s second-best source of income money.

Under a slogan reading Tourism Is In Your Interest, the Guatemalan people will get hipped on the need to protect visitors and preserve the nation’s cultural heritage.

“Tourism is in our own interest because the money that tourists spend here benefits the entire community and because we’re all supposed to look after tourists, so that they can keep the good opinion they have about the hospitality of the Guatemalan people,” said Alejandro Sinibaldi, top kick of the Central American country’s tourism sector (INGUAT).

Hospitality, art, cuisine, authenticity, music and traditions will be some of the campaign’s highlights in which INGUAT is planning to spend over a million dollars.

Some 880,223 tourists visited Guatemala last year and shelled out nearly $600 million in hard-currency money.

According to Mr. Sinibaldi, the promotional effort is intended to help the country crack the one-million-tourist plateau in 2004.

Following that nationwide campaign, local tourism authorities are toying with the possibility of reaching out to neighboring Central American nations and Mexico, and target the U.S. and European markets later on.