Panama Attracts Adventure Tourists

Nicolas Caram, regional director of the Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA), said there is a lot of interest in promoting the different itineraries and experiences that the country offers with tours on beaches, mountains, trails and experiences with nature.  Adventure tourism is synonymous with sustainability and is expected to grow worldwide at a rate of 16% each year, driven by the care of nature and the tendency of people to seek destinations that connect with new experiences that preserve the environment.  The data is part of an analysis by the Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA), which recently held a world summit on this tourism sector in Panama.

Nicolás Caram, regional director of ATTA, highlighted that Panama has all the advantages and conditions to promote the arrival of adventure tourists by having nature destinations that combine everything from the mountains to the beach, trails to explore and great biodiversity. “For more than eight years we have been working to promote Panama as a destination for adventure tourism. We work with different projects that range from training small business owners and communities in those small destinations that are still in development,” said Caram, noting that this type of tourism has grown in recent years.  At the recent summit, local and international tour operators met to design new itineraries and promote different programs to attract tourists.

Some of the 600 attendees at the summit, which took place from October 6 to 11, were able to experience different tourist itineraries in the country that took them to see the Barú volcano, several indigenous communities, beaches and towns. Carmen Yulín Cruz, representative of Geoversity, said that nature tourism is a different way of traveling and getting to know destinations and part of that experience in the case of Panama is getting to know and learning about the culture of indigenous peoples.