The Latin American arm of the Adventure Travel Trade Association spent seven days traveling through Chile at the invitation of the national and local tourism boards in the weeks leading up to ATMEX and the 2012 Adventure Travel World Summit. Antonio del Rosal and Rebeca Yanez gathered detailed information on Chile’s current adventure tourism industry while holding seminars between August 18-25th in Coyhaique, Punta Arenas, Puerto Varas and Santiago. During the meetings they introduced the ATTA to officials and companies in the region and updated them on broader consumer adventure trends and recent industry research.
The trip was timely as Chile, which represents the second largest Latin American membership within ATTA, has ranked as the number one destination in the Adventure Tourism Destination Index, now updated with 2011 information and soon to be released. The ATTA also used the opportunity to share fresh data from its global membership on North American and European perception of Chile’s adventure tourism product from a survey that was undertaken ahead of the trip, available to all members in the Hub’s Research Center.
A key topic of discussion was the nationwide efforts being undertaken by the National Tourism Ministry SERNATUR to support adventure tourism and facilitate registration and certification processes to bolster industry reliability and quality. Turismo Chile, a private organization hired with both public and private funds every two years by SERNATUR, played an active role in facilitating the seminars, helping draw strong attendance from local tour operators, travel agents, tourism board officials, local tourism chamber Directors and students, and also used them as an opportunity to educate on their new strategy of promoting the nation via five regional macro zones based on the experiential product each one offers, with adventure tourism playing a key role.Turismo Chile, who has a longstanding partnership with the ATTA as member and Adventure Travel World Summit sponsor, sent over 20 tour operators and Tourism Board officials to the recent 2012 Summit in Lucerne, Switzerland. The Chilean seminars, along with complementary strategic meetings with top-level tourism officials, were the result of federal and regional initiatives to strengthen Chile´s relationship with the ATTA with the objective of positioning Chile and its tour operators as one of the best and most competitive adventure markets globally.