Tourism Still a High Growth Industry
By Juan Carlos Martinez
Just between January and May Panama received 755,000 visitors. These visitors spent $699 million. These numbers have fueled the hotel industry growth. Close to 10,000 new rooms will be built in the next three years. Currently 10 hotels are being built including a Doubletree from the Hilton chain and the Riu by a Spanish chain. Both will be inaugurated before the end of this year and within the next 12 months six new projects will start construction. The Panamanian Hotel Association (Asociación Panameña de Hoteles APATEL) estimates that the investment in the next 36 months will be $2 billion dollars and hotel rooms will total 30,000 in the Republic of Panama. This is huge growth in 36 months considering that by December 2009 there were 17,975 rooms available.
The hotels under construction which should be ready by end 2010 are:
· Nikki Beach with 220 rooms.
· Doubletree by Hilton with 213 rooms.
· Riu with 645 rooms.
· The Beach House at Amador with 33 rooms.
· Apartahotel Essenza with 499 rooms.
The following hotels are expected to be finished by 2011:
· Trump Ocean Club with 300 rooms.
· Megapolis with 1500 rooms
· Ritz Plaza with 216 rooms
· Hilton Panama with 351 rooms
· Waldorf Astoria with 126 rooms
This rapid growth is backed with figures as the hotel and restaurant activity grew mainly through the increase of tourist arrivals. Until May of this year 6.3% more tourists visited the country than in the same period in 2009. Panama's Tourism Authority (Autoridad de Turismo de Panama) is also working to hard to ensure the steady flow of visitors with a multi-pronged approach which includes generating more direct flights to Panama from countries which are a source of tourists such as Spain. An Iberia direct flight to Panama is already programed to start in October of this year flying from Madrid to Panama. The government is backing the airline by assisting in their publicity efforts with $4 million in the course of three years in order to jointly promote Panamanian destinations.
Currently the ATP is in preliminary discussions with All Nippon Airlines (ANA) to establish a direct flight from Panama to Japan. Panama's Tourist Authority is planning a trip to Japan with representatives from COPA Airlines to further these discussions as the representatives of the Japanese airline were in Panama last year to inspect the airport facilities and COPA Airlines' hub. Should the negotiations be successful the flight would start to operate next year using the new Boeing 787 called the Dreamliner as it can travel 18 hours without refueling. The government would also assist ANA in promoting the destinations in Panama. The French-Dutch airline KLM is also negotiating with the government for joint publicity as it plans to increase its direct flight frequency to five or seven flights a week.
The airport facilities are also being significantly improved. Tocumen International Airport's expansion is progressing at a steady pace and the bidding for a new food court, food being one of the airport's Achilles heel, is underway and several international companies have submitted bids. The bidding was for a company to manage and operate the food court at Tocumen Airport. The companies that bid in are Mera Corporation from Mexico, and International Meal Company Holdings (IMC) from Puerto Rico. Both companies have operations in other airports such as Cancun, Dominican Republic, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Within two months the contract could be directly adjudicated to one of these companies. Currently Tocumen has a very limited food offer to serve the estimated 4.5 million passengers that use the airport yearly.
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