Venezuela’s recovery hopes lie in tourism
WITH its oil industry floundering, Venezuela is searching for a new engine of growth for an economy in free fall. The embattled socialist government thinks it has an answer – a future built not only on drilling and roughnecks, but beach umbrellas and piña coladas.
“Tourism is the oil that never runs out,” Marleny Contreras, the nation’s tourism minister, recently proclaimed.
Yet for a country saddled with the world’s highest inflation rate and rampant violence, becoming a tourist paradise may be as improbable as a new Disney theme park in Damascus.
Amid severe scarcities of basic goods, some hotels here have begun rationing toilet paper. Crisis-battered Venezuelans on local escapes, meanwhile, have graduated from stealing towels to pocketing lightbulbs and even coffee makers. Some resorts force their guests to sign contract-like inventory lists and submit to detailed room inspections at check out.
To keep up with 3,000 percent annual inflation, restaurants and hotels are jacking up prices almost by the day. Depending on how they play Venezuela’s rough-and-tumble exchange rate market, foreign visitors could end up paying next to nothing – or nearly $500 – for the same bottle of Venezuelan rum.
In short, industry experts say, the hospitality sector has become anything but hospitable. Tourism as the new oil? “Never,” said Vanessa Sojo, general manager of El Egua Hotel in this hard-hit beach town 50 kilometres northeast of Caracas. Business at her cosy resort slid by 80 percent last year, and several days can go by without a single guest.
Her company, like so many others, has been crippled by the difficulty in getting imported goods, which are extremely costly due to Venezuela’s devalued currency.
In November, she said, the hotel had to cancel all reservations for a week because of power blackouts, a result of the local grid failing because of a lack of available parts.
Nevertheless, jump-starting tourism is one of the top goals of President Nicolás Maduro and his “Bolivarian Economic Agenda”. Seeking to emulate communist Cuba’s success with cashing in on tourism, the government here is making a push to update state-owned hotels and woo investment.
The centrepiece of Maduro’s vision: resurrecting the needleshaped Humboldt Hotel, a white elephant of a lodge built in the 1950s in the hills of Caracas. In September, the government claimed a “luxury” makeover of the shuttered resort was 70 percent finished. But although the property was slated to relaunch in December, the month came and went without word of a reopening. This despite a video tweeted by Maduro in which he touted the much-lauded project as he and his wife dined on lavish desserts at a restaurant near the Humboldt.
“It will be the first seven-star hotel in Venezuela,” Maduro promised in the video. “Long live Venezuela!”
Home to the majestic Angel Falls and the longest coastline in the Caribbean, Venezuela as recently as 2008 earned $1 billion a year from tourism.
But that income has collapsed amid a flurry of travel warnings from the US government and European countries. Last year, Venezuela ranked second to last in global tourism growth, according to estimates by the World Travel & Tourism Council – better only than Yemen and below Libya, Syria and Nigeria.
Despite the government’s iron hand, street crime is surging. Locals who can afford it are outfitting their vehicles with bulletproof glass and armour and travelling in caravans on the bandit-infested highways. In 2017, 53 people a day were killed in Venezuela, according to the Interior Ministry, making it one of the world’s most dangerous countries.
“The biggest problem now is security,” said the owner of a midsize hotel in the seaside town of Chichiriviche, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of government reprisals. “Foreign tourists are not going to come if they think they’re going to get killed.”
His family-owned hotel, he said, was filled with Europeans and Americans as recently as two years ago. But the foreigners have mostly stopped coming. A Belgian tourist did show up last April. But he was spotted in town, the hotelier said, and one day after he checked in, six masked gunmen barged into the hotel lobby. They forced a front desk clerk to take them to the man’s room.
“It was horrible, they stole everything,” the hotel owner said. “His iPhone, his clothes. Everything.”
On the resort island of Margarita, menu prices are soaring at the renowned local eatery Juana La Loca. Owner Carlos Guerra said local fishermen are hawking their catches for dollars to restaurateurs on nearby Aruba and Curacao, so competing for seafood means paying sky-high prices in Venezuela’s near-worthless national currency.
“A dinner here can now go from 700,000 to 800,000 bolívares per person, without alcohol,” he said. “If you drink cocktails, it could be 1 million. With wine, 1.5 million to 1.8 million.”
For those tourists who aren’t put off by the crime, the shortages or the sight of people clawing through garbage cans for food, there is still one more problem: getting here.
Only 15 international airlines are still flying to Venezuela. More than 15 others have pulled out in the past two years, citing economic concerns and security troubles.
Airlines say the government has withheld hundreds of millions of dollars worth of proceeds from local ticket sales.
“The government claims it wants to encourage tourism, but instead of attracting tourists, it drives them away,” said Julio Arnaldes, president of the Venezuelan Association of Tourist Wholesalers.
Venezuela’s Tourism Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.