Spanish hoteliers, who have enjoyed a significant presence in Latin America for decades, see in Brazil, Chile and Colombia the best growth potential in a region that is already home to some 700 Spanish-owned hotels.
“Twenty-five years ago there were practically no Spanish hotels outside our borders. At this time, there are more than 1,500, above all in Spanish-America,” the president of the Spanish Hotel Confederation, Juan Molas, told Efe on Tuesday after participating in the 16th Ibero-American Conference of Tourism Ministers and Businessmen.
Besides Brazil, Chile and Colombia, other Latin American countries with excellent tourism potential include Uruguay and Peru, Molas said.
Tourism officials from the six Latin American countries who participated in the conference - Costa Rica, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua - emphasized the benefits and guarantees their nations offer to Spanish investment.
Cuba’s deputy tourism minister, Xiomara Martinez, said that “the most important potential” of her country, where about a dozen Spanish hotel chains operate, is “the security, not only legal” and the fact that it is a “transparent (nation) for negotiations.”
Spain’s industry, energy and tourism minister, Jose Manuel Soria, who inaugurated the conference, emphasized the willingness of his government to build relations with Ibero-American countries “on the basis of the strengthening of the Spanish tourism sector inside and outside our borders.”
He also defended on Tuesday the cooperation between the public and private sectors as the key to propelling growth and creating jobs, both in Spain and throughout the Ibero-American community.
