Central America Targets Connectivity Fix to Boost Regional Tourism

Connectivity across Central America remains one of the biggest challenges facing the region’s tourism growth. While destinations continue to market themselves as a unified, multi-destination region, the lack of seamless air and land routes still limits travelers’ ability to move freely between countries. Earlier today, News Five caught up with Efren Perez, Pro Tem President of the Federation of Central American Tourism Chambers and President of the Belize Tourism Industry Association, ahead of a regional meeting where connectivity was a key topic on the table. Organizations like the Central American Tourism Agency and FEDECATUR are now working together to find solutions that could improve cross-border access, revisit the CA-4 Agreement, and strengthen partnerships with regional airlines. It’s all part of a wider push to make it easier to move through the region, give travelers more reasons to stay, and strengthen Central America’s standing on the world tourism map, says Perez on connectivity.

 

Efren Perez, Pro Tempore, FEDECATUR

“Connectivity was one of the issues that we discussed yesterday in our meeting with AYA. Connectivity was one, regional immigration was another. We, as the private sector, outlined those challenges and presented them to our local tourism authorities so that they can take them to another level. All of this is important because if we want to grow tourism regionally, we have to all be in the same loop. All countries are interested in doing cross-border regional travel, but we also want to make sure that we are improving how travelers move from one country to the next.  As a simple example, a traveler coming from Honduras to Belize might not necessarily need to have a round-trip ticket to take them back. If they are doing multi-destination travel, which is what we are promoting here, it means they might fly into Belize and probably take a GR transfer to Mexico or a ground transfer over to Petén. Obviously, immigration has to look at specific key things, and we’re completely on board with that because we don’t want to have too porous a border. But we also want to maintain the flow of tourism. So it’s a conversation that needs to be had to see the best ways we can improve what we’re doing, not only as a country but also as a region. What we will be focusing on is exactly what I just mentioned earlier. We’re looking at connectivity—ways in which the private sector can provide some sort of proposal or work along with our government agencies to come up with a solution to improve connectivity. That is one. Another focus is the integration of the private sector into the AYA promotional strategy. Yesterday we had a meeting with AYA; they presented a plan, and we presented our feedback in terms of how the integration can happen. We’re very excited about that and will be discussing more of it today in our regional meeting. These are two of the key things we want to work on, along with the general promotion of the destination.”