Furthermore, Mr. Ricardo Sosa, Executive Secretary for the Tourism Promotion Institute of Argentina (INPROTUR) will be joining the delegation, along with a team of experts on adventure travel from the institute. Mr. Diego Noia, President of the Argentinian Adventure Travel and Ecotourism Association of Argentina (AAETAV.) Argentina´s participation in ATMEX is an example of the synergies developed amongst the public and private sectors over the recent years.
However, ATMEX and Argentina´s collaboration is not limited to it´s participation at the 10th edition of this event, but through a relationship built and developed over the past years and with the objective of uniting the voices of both Latin American countries´adventure travel industries; learning more about Argentina´s work, challenges and success stories and showing its adventure travel product to Mexican outbound tour operators and travel agencies. In 2020, during ATMEX Loreto, a 100% virtual event due to the COVID 19 pandemic, Argentina participated with a delegation of 11 tour operators who engaged in the one on one business meetings with buyers and media; 45 tourism ministry representatives from the 23 different provinces of the country, including the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. As part of its participation Argentina offered the conference “Todas las Aventuras en una Ruta…La 40,” where some of the top local tour operators took the audience through a journey along one of the most iconic South American adventure routes, La Ruta 40, with its wonderful landscapes, natural spaces and countless possibilities to practice adventure travel activities.
In 2021, while the pandemic kept the world on hold and Argentina´s borders kept closed, we still wanted to continue the conversation on the wonderful adventure travel product Argentina offers, therefore we curated and ran the first immersive virtual event the Argentina Adventure Immersion. During one whole week of the month of November local experts guided us to the different Argentinian provinces and the ATMEX community had the opportunity to learn more about fantastic places and adventure experiences. The Argentina Adventure Immersion was broadcasted through ATMEX´s Plataforma 365 and on Facebook Live reaching up to 61,815 people who were part of this unique and innovative trip in a moment where traveling was not possible.
As different countries in the world, including Mexico, Argentina and other Latin American ones implemented aggressive vaccination programs, tourism started to reactivate and the most adventurous ventured to travel again, finally making their travel plans which they had to cancel or postpone two years before, a reality. The reactivation was gradual and each country handled it differently, however what was clear is that most destinations started incentivizing and promoting domestic travel.
And regarding domestic travel, Argentina didn´t stay behind, but continue implementing concrete actions:
1) With the PRE VIAJE Program (https://previaje.gob.ar/ -a presale tourism program which refunds the 50% of the value of the trip incentivizing the Argentinian people to travel around their country and keeping the tourism activity afloat.
2) With LA RUTA NATURAL program (https://www.larutanatural.gob.ar/en ), launched during the Latin Amercian International Tourism Fair, FIT 2021 by the Strategic Development Undersecretary of the Ministry of Tourism and Sports and coordinated by the Nature Tourism Development Department. La Ruta Natural is the first Nature Tourism integral development and promotion program of Argentina.
3) With the training program of Nature Travel Specialists (https://en.adventureargentina.travel/ ) led by the INPROTUR and the AAETAV and which reached up to 200 travel agents who have obtained their certificates so far. This program also included a number of presentations to strategic markets such as Germany, Brazil, Spain, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.
This year we have set the stage to welcome Argentina as our guest destination in Guanajuato from October 5-7 for an ATMEX edition which marks a decade driving and strengthening Mexico´s adventure and nature travel industry, and which plans to expand these efforts deep into Latin America.
