A two-city ‘Destination Peru’ Roadshow and Workshop began at the Radisson Sydney last week with some 80 travel industry personnel and media attending the South American country’s first large-scale trade event in Australia.
Representatives from Condor Travel, Inkanatura Travel, Grayline Peru – Viajes Pacifico, Lima Tours S.A., Neuvo Mundo Viajes, Solmartur, Viracocha Tourismo Internacional and PromPeru, the national tourism organisation responsible for promotion and marketing attended the Sydney function and will be at the workshop and presentations being held in the Mercure Melbourne tonight.
[Pictured: PromPeru’s Sydney workshop proved to be popular with information-hungry agents.]
Several tourism professionals travelled especially from Lima to Australia to participate in the travel trade events including Angela Maric, Incoming Tourism Coordinator, Asia & Oceania, PromPeru.
Peru will receive about 1.8 million arrivals by the end of this year. She expects that the number from Australia will rise from the 22,000 Australians who visited the country in 2006. The average stay was 23 days, she said.
Peru is 28 per cent mountain, 12 per cent coast and 60 per cent jungle, a combination that surprises many visitors but a mix that allows for an enormous diversity of tourist resources for the “new traveller”, she said.
There are other aspects of Peru that are also not so well known including the country’s pre Inca civilisation, its multi faceted cuisine and rich bio diversity and wide range of nature based activities and adventure sports, she added.
[Pictured: Angela Maric intends to raise visitor number from Australia.]
Ms Maric said that Australia is a potential market that Peru wanted to develop. PromPeru has plans to establish a representative office in Australia and would be evaluating proposals submitted direct to PromPeru or Carlos Vasquez, Consul General, Sydney in early 2008.
Meanwhile, in order to meet growth in demand for seats to South America, the South American carrier, LAN will launch an extra weekly flight from Sydney via Auckland to Santiago, Chile on December 20. This will mean a daily service to South America with convenient connections on to Lima, Peru, said Ana Pereira, LAN’s NSW Account Manager.
Peru is the top destination for Australians followed by Chile, Argentina and Brazil, she said. She added that travel on the carrier’s extensive South American network continues to be stimulated with more passengers opting for the airline’s “South America AirPass”. This discounted but commissionable travel scheme allows passengers to purchase coupons priced from US$99 for travel on the LAN network.
The carrier operates three class Airbus A340-300 aircraft from Australia although the carrier has ordered 26 Boeing Dreamliner 787-8s and 9s and will lease a further six aircraft.
Exclusive Report by Thomas E. King, TravelMole’s Travel and Lifestyle Editor
