Alert in Argentina: inbound tourism falls by 20% as it becomes expensive

For several months now, Argentina has become expensive, even in dollars, and inbound tourism continues to fall. Thus, the balance is once again unbalanced according to certain indicators. The number of Argentines who crossed into Chile, for example, increased by 145% and, in parallel, there was a sharp drop of 46.6% in the number of Argentines who arrived in the country.

During the past month, which included the two-week winter vacation, 666,600 people chose to Travel abroad, 24.4% more than in July 2023. At the same time, 508,800 foreigners chose to come to Argentina, 17.7% less than last year, according to a report recently published by INDEC.

This occurs in a context in which the official exchange rate rose below inflation during all months of 2024, and in this way completely erased the discrete jump it had had in December, starting with the devaluation validated by the Government of Javier Milei in its first days.

In concrete terms, this means that Argentina is increasingly expensive in dollars, compared to the rest of its trading partners. Although there are permanent cycles in the exchange rate and variations that affect the predominance of outbound or inbound tourism, at the moment there is no good outlook for receiving more international tourism due to current circumstances.

However, it is worth noting that there were two markets that did not experience any decline: Brazil and the European Union were two cases where the figure exceeded that of the previous year.