Tourism in Panama?

Isthmian tourist formulas resemble the situation on the streets of the capital. Cover the hole here, rebuild Cuba Avenue which is a nuisance to the long time driver, so that when the rainy season comes it collapses again due to the selection of very poor materials, restarting the process, bribery and general bad mood.

let’s start with the COVID-19 pandemic. A fantastic excuse to wash your hands, blaming an already eroded cancer in activity for poor results. Instead of using the hiatus to plan projects and improve tourism inventory, we find ourselves with an unmaintained coastline, a harbor for cruise ships where similar to the Centennial Bridge, We forget the construction of access roads, the expanded Tocumen airport, without even deciphering its logistics, and the visitor center for Panama Canal in Miraflores under renovation during peak season.

That, among other pitfalls. Considering that the United States of America is our largest source of visitors, airlines have decided to freely increase the prices of airline tickets due to the increased demand. Let’s take the example of Miami because of its proximity to Panama ticket prices have almost tripled year-on-year, making a two-and-a-half-hour flight almost as demanding as a Europe on the road from 10 o’clock. This is the result of a quasi-monopoly on the route controlled by American Airlines and Copa.

When choosing a vacation destination, a resident of the southern part the state of Florida is more attractive to travel to Cancun or the Dominican Republic, excluding Panama, not only due to transportation costs, but also due to the lack of all-inclusive packages that could compete in quality with their Aztec or Dominican counterparts, as well as recreational sites at the height of Xel-Ha or X-Caret where the tourist can enjoy many activities for several days.

There is focus or pronunciation here advertised, or its absence, so that the place and its advantages are known. After many years of dialogue, we seem to be investing feverishly in this area. What we have forgotten is a special strategy to distinguish a destination from others. It’s even more important planning of existing tourist sites and capture

A specific case Casco Antiguo is miserable. Supposedly rebuilt, we still find almost a third of its buildings in ruins, and others do not respect the architectural plan of the site. When one agrees, or even God forbid, two cruise ships at Amador Pier, chaos rules the area and its perimeter causing roadblocks that stretch to the height of the Balboa statue in the heart of the coastal strip.

If you move to comparable tourist spots in the region, e.g examples of Antigua in Guatemala, Cartagena de Indias in Colombia or Old San Juan in Puerto Ricofluid traffic and the endowment of the environment with a purely touristic approach come to the fore.

Here we continue to Casco with an army of clerks moving pieces of paper between government offices, monopolizing limited parking spaces, creating logistical chaos in an area that should be solely for the exploitation of smokeless industry. What is the government waiting for to mobilize its own hosts to the government city well isolated from the tourist environment?

So if we want to multiply the flow of visitors to Panama, Let’s look at all those third-world edges that limit their performance. This requires a non-existent state call and eradication of the constant presence of garbage everywhere. When consulting a tourist about his experience with the Isthmus, he begins with a sense of surprise when he sees the surrounding skyscrapers through the airplane window before departure. landing and ends with the comment that unfortunately we live in a garbage dump with organized traffic chaos and laissez faire where everyone does what they want, since visitor victim of robbery left and right What a shame Panama!