La agónica industria turística de Panamá exige flexibilizar la entrada de viajeros

RIO DE JANEIRO BRAZIL – Panama’s tourism industry expected to rebound this year after the debacle of 2020 due to the pandemic but is moribund with a hotel occupancy of less than 10%. It has asked the Government to pave the way by relaxing the “excessive” health controls at the country’s main airport.

“As a tourism and productive sector, we have been asking, and not only now but for months, that we want a balance between the economy and health,” said in an interview with Efe, the president of the Chamber of Tourism (Camtur) of Panama, Ernesto Orillac.

The country’s main tourism associations this week sent the government a letter in which they demanded seven “immediate” measures to facilitate the entry of passengers through Tocumen Airport, the main airport and an important hub for the continent.

Among the demands are to allow the entry of already vaccinated passengers without requiring covid-19 tests, to implement the digital vaccination certificate, to ask non-vaccinated passengers only for a negative PCR, and to eliminate mandatory quarantines for passengers from certain destinations.

Mandatory quarantines and the performance of two PCR tests in Panama are measures established by the Ministry of Health for passengers coming from several destinations, including South America, the main market for Panamanian tourism.

The tourism industry demanded that the Ministry of Health “withdraw its operations” from Tocumen airport and that mobility restrictions throughout the national territory have been reimplemented in recent weeks in the face of the arrival of a third pandemic wave be eliminated.

These measures of “immediate” execution can open a better path to reactivate Panama’s economy after last year’s 17.9% plunge, said the unions, which emphasized that tourism contributed 4.5 billion dollars a year to the GDP before the pandemic.

MEASURES “WITHOUT SCIENTIFIC BASIS

The restrictions on entry to Panama “in our criteria, make no sense and have no scientific basis,” said Orillac.

“What is the difference between a Panamanian and another visitor who comes with his vaccines,” he asked, referring to the resolution in force since this week that exempts from quarantine and PCR tests upon arrival in the country to Panamanian citizens or residents with a complete anti-virus vaccination schedule from South America, United Kingdom, South Africa, and India.

The entry of travelers from South America “could be opened as it has been done with residents and vaccinated nationals”, who only have to present a PCR with a maximum of 48 hours of performing, said Orillac, who stressed that the “virus is not entering through the borders”, since the infected detected at the airport “are less than 1%” of the total.

2021, THE YEAR OF NO RECOVERY

The tourism reactivation expected this 2021 of between “30 to 40%” concerning 2019 “is not even reaching 10%”, said the president of the Chamber of Tourism, who recalled that the sector collapsed by 75% last year because of the pandemic.

The 2021 “started closed with extreme measures” to mobility imposed by the Government -to stop an aggressive second pandemic wave- “without consultation, from one moment to another, when tourism decisions are taken many weeks in advance”.

For the president of the Panamanian Association of Hotels (Apatel), Armando Rodriguez, “the numbers speak: before the pandemic, up to 7,000 people passed through Tocumen every day, now we are only reaching 1,500”.

The occupation “does not exceed 10 %”, and it was possible to “reactivate 15 % of the employees because all the hotels that have opened have done it to 50 % of their capacity. We are talking about generating 45,000 jobs in 2019,” said Rodriguez.

In 2020 “the hotel sector closed with losses of 480 million”, said Rodriguez, who regretted that the reactivation that the sector had been experiencing in the interior of the country slowed down again with the restrictions tonight and Sunday mobility imposed in the last weeks.

“Tourism is not improvised, it is planned. And this cannot be done if there is a lot of uncertainty (…) we are betting on the use of good practices and emulating good examples from other countries such as the Dominican Republic, Mexico, or Costa Rica”, he said.