Protests continue for a week, resulting in losses of billions of won as tourists are cut off
Four countries, including the U.S., Germany, France and Brazil, have been designated as travel caution areas.
The Peruvian government announced on January 31 (local time) that it was canceling its plan to outsource the sale of tourist tickets to Machu Picchu, a world-famous tourist site, to a private company.
This is interpreted as the government giving in to the fact that local protesters opposing privatization have blocked the entrance to the historic site for a week and even the railway service to the site has been suspended.
Despite the government’s decision to cancel, the streets, hotels, restaurants and other tourist facilities in this area are still almost abandoned.
Eleven days have passed since the Peruvian government announced changes to the ticket sales system and privatization. When the government changed ticket sales, which had originally been done by the state government for 15 years, local companies opposed the change and continued to protest, including canceling tourism business contracts with the government.
Peruvian Tourism Minister Leslie Urqueaga acknowledged that state authorities had illegally failed to report $1.8 million in ticket sales and decided to accept the protesters’ demands during a meeting with local mayors of Cusco and other mayors in the Machupic region. decided.
The Peruvian government changed the management of ticket sales back to the government and canceled a contract that had entrusted online ticket sales to Peru’s most wealthy economic organization. This contract took effect in mid-January, and tickets have been on sale since then.
The suspension of railway operations took effect on the 29th of last month and was immediately restored, but the number of tourists is still extremely low, with only a few coming in at a time.
“It’s almost like during the COVID-19 pandemic, we hardly see any tourists,” Roger Monzon, an employee at the Incas Land Hotel in the Machu Picchu region, told reporters. This hotel, which has 18 rooms, is currently hosting only two Portuguese tourists.
Even during protests that lasted for a week, most of the tourists who came here were young people, but they had to travel a longer and more difficult road than usual.
You must drive here, which is 210km from Cusco, and then walk for more than two hours from a nearby hydroelectric power plant to reach Machu Picchu to find accommodations. Then you have to walk another 2 and a half hours to reach the old stone ruins.
Four countries, including the United States, Germany, France, and Brazil, have declared Machu Picchu, which has been designated a World Cultural Heritage site since 1983, as a travel caution area and are warning of the possibility of running out of drinking water due to disruptions in transportation of daily necessities due to protests.
Cusco is a city whose economy relies on tourism revenue, and more than 200,000 people are directly employed in the tourism sector. Before this protest, the number of tourists visiting Machu Picchu reached 4,500 every day.
There are still no official statistics on the amount of loss caused by the week-long protests, but some tourism union estimates put the loss at around $4.7 million (KRW 6.27215 billion).
“The losses are greatest in sectors directly connected to tourism, such as tour operators, hotels, restaurants and tour guides, but in addition, general markets, taxi drivers and farmers have also suffered great damage,” said Elena González, president of the Cusco City Tourism Association.
[리마( 페루)= AP /뉴시스]
Source: Donga
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.