9,000 hotel rooms closed as visitors plummet 76%

NINE-THOUSAND of the 32,000 hotel rooms registered in Panama until the end of 2019 are out of inventory due to the low entry of visitors because of the coronavirus pandemic. Some are rooms have closed and others have not been enabled because they do not have the staff to attend them and there are no visitors.

According to the report of the Tourism Authority of Panama (ATP), up to August 365,218 visitors entered the country a fall of 76% compared to the first 8 months of 2019, when entry  of 1,531,000 visitors was recorded.

Armando Rodríguez, president of the Panamanian Association of Hotels (Apatel) , said that the hotels that are operating have only enabled 50% of their rooms, while others have chosen not to open.

It is estimated that less than 40% of the hotels in the country opened their doors after the authorities allowed the restart of operations on October 12, 2020, after being closed for more than seven months due to mobility restrictions applied to stop the transmission of covid-19

Ernesto Orillac, president of the Panama Chamber of Tourism (Camtur), pointed out that a significant number of tourism companies have chosen to continue closed since they do not have the resources to reactivate the suspended contracts that are mandated by the Ministry of Labor and Labor Development were to be activated at the end of October.

Embassy security alert

He said that the security alert issued by the United States Embassy in Panama for its citizens places more pressure on Panamanian tourism, since US is the main source of visitors to Panama. The situation is aggravated by the restrictions that the Ministry of Health still maintains on unvaccinated travelers from the United States, who must remain in quarantine for three days, regardless of whether they present a negative result of a PCR test.