Nicaragua’s tourism sector has little hope that there will be a mobilization of Nicaraguan travelers to the interior of the country during Semana Santa. The Nicaraguan National Chamber of Tourism (Canatur) already has a mutli million-dollar loss estimate and the hotels are completely empty.
International tourists have canceled reservations. The traditional tens of thousands of Nicaraguans from Costa Rica coming home for the holidays will be not as that country will cancel residency if they leave.
This is the panorama of the sector is bleak.
While the coronavirus cases continue to expand worldwide, the quarantine that the different countries have applied and the one that has been implemented voluntarily by Nicaraguans brings uncertainty to the tourism sector, which had the expectation of counting this year with the influx of Central American and national tourism.
Lucy Valenti, president of the Canatur stated that the losses have not yet been quantified, but preliminary a decrease of more than US$10 million dollars could be expected, after the expansion of the Covid-19 pandemic worldwide.
“We do not have an estimate yet, but the tourism we were expecting at Easter was 70,000 people, we are talking about US$10 million dollars in those days alone, but if you take the previous days the loss is greater, we would have to do another calculation,” said Valenti.
According to the statistical yearbook of the Nicaraguan Institute of Tourism (Intur) of 2018, in March, which included Easter, 195,753 visitors came to the country, 15,009 more people than in the same period of 2017, when 180,744 people visited.
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