This, Panama’s centennial year, is breaking all national records for tourism. There are many factors other than Panamanians and others with historic ties to the isthmus returning to celebrate. There have been some big investments and a lot of small investments. Trouble in the Middle East and tensions between the US and some of its traditional European allies have diverted more international travelers our way. The cruise industry is doing well. Very importantly, the business sector is thinking in more creative and sophisticated ways about the realities of the tourism industry.
Thus when Panama’s American Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM) held its third annual International Tourism Forum on September 17, it was neither a generic pep rally nor a theoretical brainstorming session. It was mainly a discussion of specific niches that provide this country with solid business opportunities, mainly by people who make their livings in those market segments.
The afternoon’s first presentation was by ornithologist Dr. Robert Ridgely, the author of “The Birds of Panama.”
[Reporter’s note: If you are at all bilingual, and especially if you live down here, buy the Spanish edition, “Los Pájaros de Panamá.” Local bookstores charge much less than they do for the English version, which doesn’t have the Spanish names of the species shown and listed. The Spanish version, on the other hand, does have the English names of the various birds.]
Ridgely came down here with the US Army and found his calling as a birder. He published his groundbreaking guidebook in 1976, then set his sights to the south, researching and writing about South America’s birds. Along the way he picked up a PhD, worked as a guide for international birding tours, held important positions in conservationist organizations and watched Panama from afar. He has seen eco-tourism from before there was a word for it through its growth into a very important industry for places like Costa Rica and Belize.
When he began to guide Audubon groups on tours to Panama, Costa Rica and Belize in the late 60s and early 70s, “we stayed at hotels in the city, which isn’t acceptable today.” Whatever the bird censuses may say, he note that these days birding tourists tend to see more birds because people know more about where to go and what to look for.
Ridgely has observed falls as well as rises. In Panama in the 80s, he said, “eco-tourism kind of fell off the table” because of the dictatorship’s ugly reputation, which let Costa Rica grab the market share that this country had been developing. He doesn’t believe that the experience is just ancient history to be forgotten, because even though we’re recovering from the damage now that doesn’t make us immune from the negative effects that political and social developments could have on our tourism industry in the future. And besides, he doesn’t think that Panama has yet returned to the top tier in eco-tourism.
How to improve our standing? Ridgely said that a lot of places that used to be open to birders have been closed to public access by Interoceanic Regional Authority (ARI) and the Panama Canal Authority (ACP), and the most egregious closure of all has been the lack of maintenance and restricted access to the Pipeline Road between Gamboa and the Atlantic side.
In last year’s forum a number of the speakers denigrated tourists without a lot of money, but Panama still gets a lot of them and Ridgely defended the backpackers. “If we treat them well when they’re young, they’ll come back after their wanderlust is over, when they can afford to stay in a fancier place,” he argued.
The renowned ornithologist had a major announcement to make. The Fundacion Avifauna Eugene Eisenmann has been formed, and has set as its task the restoration and reopening of the Pipeline Road and that creation of a “Panama Rainforest Discovery Center” along it.
Raúl Arias, the former legislator who converted an old Doppler radar facility into a celebrated little bird watching resort, also had an announcement. In 2005 the American Birding Convention will be held at the premises of his competitor, the Gamboa Rainforest Resort. (Really, the competition isn’t so fierce, because Arias’s perpetually full 12-room Canopy Tower don’t cater to the convention business that Mr. Bern’s much larger hotel can and does serve.)
Arias echoed Ridgely in criticizing ARI and the ACP for closing prime birding areas to the public, and also faulted the government’s IPAT tourism bureau for its failure to advertise Panama in birding magazines or set up promotional booths at major US and international bird watcher conventions.
Noting that the ambitious Pipeline Road project that Ridgely announced will take a few years to accomplish, he urged immediate repairs to the road, so that it will be usable during the 2005 convention. “We have to have the Pipeline Road open for that,” he opined, “or it will be a flop.”
Elyse Elkin, who works for the American Express tourism subsidiary Travel Impressions, looked at Panamanian tourism through the lens of mass marketing. She noted that in recent years American tourists don’t like to stray far from home, tend to take trips that last fewer days and are very concerned about safety. Thus to her, Panama needs to emphasize how close we are in terms of flying time from the United States and how relatively safe a destination Panama is, and then try to pique people’s interest in a way that encourages them to stay here a few days longer than they otherwise might have.
She warned us against trying to grow too fast. To succeed as a tourist destination, Elkin said, a country must offer the services that people expect, but to offer those services people must be trained to give them and that takes time.
Elkin decried the tendency for tour packages sold over the Internet to drive prices down for the whole tourism industry and called on Panama to resist. “Once people get used to that, you’ll never get your hotel rates back up,” she predicted.
Echoing this concern was Fidel Reyes of the upscale Gamboa Rainforest Resort, who used to work with Travel Impressions in Mexico. He described how groups whipsaw hotels against one another to get lower prices for their conventions and urged the industry to stand together to keep room rates up. He also warned that people in the tourism sector must deliver what their customers are looking for because the grapevine is vast, fast and unforgiving, such that “there is no second chance.”
Kathleen Peddicord, editor and publisher of the International Living magazine and website, spoke of Panama’s changing reputation --- mostly with respect to her own publication. She once looked at Panama from afar as just a large and boring military base, and now rates it as the top place for Americans who wish to retire abroad to go.
Peddicord, an American who lives in Ireland but is considering another move due to rising prices there, said that the retiree market has a lot more business generating potential for a country than ordinary tourism, and urged people to understand the difference between a retirement haven and an old folks’ home. Presently she urges her readers to think about Panama City, Boquete and Contadora Island as this country’s best places to retire.
Sam Taliaferro, the promoter of Boquete’s Valle Escondido development, also pointed out the economic growth that happens when foreigners retire here. “The typical retiree brings a knowledge base,” which can be the impetus for new market demands and business developments in a relatively poor community. Then, he pointed out, retirees generate tourism in the form of family and friends who come down to visit. That’s also “grassroots marketing” for new retirees, as some of the visitors decide to move down here.
He illustrated the process by his observations of Boquete over the past few years. Where there used to be one restaurant, there are now seven. His development has a nine-hole golf course, but now some Canadians are putting in an 18-hole course across town. His development has room for 150 houses, 30 of which are already occupied, and it’s already affecting the local economy. “This particular niche market is one that’s going to stay and continue to spend money here,” he predicted.
Taliaferro acknowledged that there are certain obstacles to Panama’s development as a retirement Mecca. There’s the reputation that lingers on from the Noriega years which isn’t helped by the current corruption and the weak rule of law. However, he thinks those things can be surmounted, especially if an effort is made to help investors coming into the country rather than leaving them to the tender mercies of every hustler that comes around.
The session ended with presentations by Mexican Alejandro Carrillo, who works for the Grupo Posadas hotel chain and explained the structures and programs by which his country’s government promotes tourism, and by IPAT director Liriola Pitti, who made a special point of disputing Taliaferro’s assertion there is corruption in the Panamanian government.
The most interesting thing that Carrillo had to say was in the question-and-answer session, and its import may have flown over his head.
In response to a question, he said that the Mexican government’s tourism effort, which serves a country with a population some 35 times that of Panama’s and which encompasses an area of about 26 time ours, employs about 2,000 people. IPAT, by comparison, has about 800 people on its payroll.
This was AMCHAM, and as one would expect people were polite to Liriola Pitti. But if you want to know what people in Panama’s tourism industry really think about IPAT, consider Panama’s and Mexico’s respective tourism offices’ payrolls. Might you wonder what Panama’s tourism industry gets from having these 800 people on the payroll? Our hotel, resort, tour group and restaurant operators wonder about this quite frequently.
Also in this section:
Business & Economy Briefs
General strike called over Social Security crisis
US, EU don't get their way at Cancun WTO summit
AMCHAM tourism forum
