Desperate Venezuela aims to woo tourists
In nation saddled with world’s highest inflation rate and rampant violence, skeptics note hospitality industry is anything but hospitable
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 contractlike 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 31 miles northeast of Caracas. Business at her cozy 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. The televisions in half of her hotel’s 18 rooms don’t work, she said, because spare parts for repairs are exorbitantly expensive or simply unavailable. “This is never going to happen,” she said. 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 centerpiece of Maduro’s vision: resurrecting the needle-shaped 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 U.S. 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.
The decline of the tourism industry is part of a broader economic disintegration reflected in an estimated 15 percent contraction in gross domestic product last year. The crisis is partly linked to oil, which accounts for 90 percent of the government’s revenue. Global oil prices are sharply lower, and output has plummeted as the industry buckles under the weight of corruption, neglect and a flight of expertise. But critics also tie the economic nose-dive to maneuvers by Maduro — the handpicked successor of left-wing firebrand Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013 — to establish near-dictatorial powers.
Despite the government’s iron hand, street crime is surging. Locals who can afford it are outfitting their vehicles with bulletproof glass and armor and traveling 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.