Chile received record number of tourists in 2017

SANTIGO – During last year, a total of 6,449,993 people visited the country, representing an increase of 13.3% compared to 2016.

According to figures provided by the undersecretary of Tourism, Javiera Montes, the main receptive market was that of Argentines with 3,323,771 visits to Chile, which represented an increase of 14.6% compared to the previous year.

In second place were the Brazilians. The visits of these amounted to 544 thousand (24.1% more than in 2016). They were followed by Europeans, whose arrival increased by 6.3% compared to 2016, which is equivalent to 477,911 tourists. There were also visits by 46,131 Italians, which rose 11.1%. The number of English grew 6% with the arrival of 54,714 tourists; the French increased by 8.6% to 83,758 arrivals; Spaniards grew 3.5% with 80,690 arrivals; while Germans increased 6% to 78,262.

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A total of 211,718 tourists from the U.S. arrived, with a rise of 1.5% compared to 2016. On the other hand, a total of 51,978 Australian tourists visited Chile, which marked an increase of 2%. One of the continents that had a considerable rise was the Asian with an increase of 22.9% compared to the previous year. Chile was visited by 83,351 tourists, highlighting the Chinese (30,774 visitors), with a rise of 33.8%.

The Chilean Government stressed that during 2017, “thanks to promotional campaigns, the development of new products and tourist destinations and a renewed diversification of experiences, this trend has been reversed”. Thus, during the past year foreign tourists in the country would have had an average stay of around 10 nights, because they increased their stay by almost 2.5 nights, which implies an increase of 30% compared to 2016.

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According to estimates made by the Studies Division of the Undersecretary of Tourism, in 2018 the total arrival of tourists will register an increase of about 8.5% with respect to 2017. This would imply an increase of 6.4 million tourists to about 7 million visitors.