The number of tourists that visited Peru's northern region of La Libertad has doubled in the last seven years partly due to the improved tourist services, said the Regional Office of Foreign Trade and Tourism.
According to the head of the regional office, Bernando Alva Perez, the coastal region is expected to welcome more than 1,4 million domestic and foreign tourists by year end, up from 600,000 visitors reported in 2007.
"We expect to be welcoming nearly 1.4 million tourists by the end of the year. We used to see on average between 600,000 to 700,000 tourists every year, which means the number of visitors touring the northern region has almost doubled in seven years", Alva was quoted as saying by La Republica daily.
This growth, he said, is based on two major factors. The first one is the private sector, which is increasingly investing in hotels and restaurants, whose owners are concerned about the service quality, training of employees and constant improvement.
“On the other hand, the public sector is the second pillar on which this growth relies, since it finances, for example, the construction of access roads to tourist sites,” he added.
In this sense, he claimed the regional government has allocated more than 70 million soles (US$24.7 million) for road improvements in the tourist area.
Likewise, Alva pointed out that tourist arrivals in the northern region have fuelled the dynamism of business and transport sectors.
(END) DLG/RMB