World Cup promotion fails to attract extra tourists to Brazil

Brazil hopes that the 2016 Olympics will boost tourism. Photo / AP

The 2016 Olympics will be no panacea for Brazil's faltering economy if last year's World Cup is any guide. Contrary to government projections, Brazil has failed to lure to its beaches and jungles many of the 3.5 billion TV viewers that followed the tournament.

The flow of tourists to the country, which spent more to host the mega-event than any nation before it, has remained flat from a year earlier since the final match in July last year, according to tour operators and an online search engine. Spending by foreign visitors fell 7.4 per cent from August through November, compared with a year earlier, central bank data shows.

From the rhythms of Carnival in Rio de Janeiro to the Amazon forest and Iguassu Falls, Brazil boasts some of the world's outstanding travel attractions. Yet several hurdles, from high costs and violence to poor marketing and logistics, mean many potential visitors choose to go elsewhere, said Diogo Canteras, partner at hotel consulting firm HotelInvest.

"Brazil has attractions. It doesn't have competitive prices, promotion, or infrastructure," Canteras said. "The World Cup wasn't the generator of tourists that was expected."

Brazil spent US$11 billion on the World Cup, which was supposed to increase the nation's visibility and consolidate an image of "happiness and receptivity" to boost its tourist potential, according to a government-sponsored study on the economic benefits of the Cup published early last year.

There is no sign of that happening.

"The Cup generated a lot of interest but no lasting business," said Salvador Saladino, head of the Brazilian Incoming Travel Organisation, an association representing travel agencies. Reservations for 2015 showed no significant increase from recent years, he said.

The number of consumers searching for trips to Brazil spiked in the months before the World Cup and then returned to "normal" levels in the subsequent months, according to a study conducted by Skyscanner, a travel search engine.

That could raise questions for companies that have bet on growing tourism.

In 2013 Alvaro Diago, chief operations officer of InterContinental Hotels Group in Latin America, said the World Cup and the Olympics would be an opportunity for Brazil to consolidate its tourism image and that the company planned to triple the number of its hotels in Brazil to 39 during the next decade.

InterContinental said in an emailed response to questions that it considers Brazil an important country for tourism and that "like all markets, the economic dynamics in Brazil are constantly evolving".

Accor is another company that bet heavily on Brazil, signing 34 contracts last year alone to open new hotels in the country. The company's press office didn't respond to an email seeking comment.

After hosting the 2010 soccer World Cup, South Africa's international tourist arrivals grew at an annual average rate of 7.4 per cent in the three years through 2013, when it received 9.6 million foreign visitors. Brazil in the same year received 5.8 million tourists.

- Bloomberg