Prospects for Latin America and Caribbean Region in the Global Market for International Tourism: A Projection to the Year 2020

Abstract

International tourism has become very important to several developing countries as a major source of foreign exchange earnings for their economic development. This article explores the potentials of countries of the Latin America and Caribbean region in the global market for international tourism up to the end of the next decade. This was achieved by analyzing past trends of international tourism in the region, and projecting these trends to the year 2020 using a combination of four different time‐series projection models evaluated by the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE). Results show that international tourism arrivals into the Latin America and Caribbean region would increase from 51.21 million in 2004 (end of observed period) to between 87.58 million and 100.03 million by the year 2020. The corresponding figures for international tourism receipts would go from US$34.11 billion in 2004 to between US$64.92 billion and US$75.79 billion by the year 2020. Socioeconomic impacts of these findings are given, and recommendations for marketing strategies, government public policies, and directions for future research are discussed. The author thanks the Development Data Group (DECDG) of the World Bank for providing the data for this research. Insightful comments and recommendations on the initial manuscript by the anonymous reviewers of the Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing are greatly appreciated.