Nicolas Garrido (Chile)
Summary
This article analyzes the tourism value chain in nine Latin American countries. For years, tourism policy in the region has been measured almost exclusively by figures such as international arrivals, hotel occupancy, and average visitor spending. However, this article reveals a more complex reality: tourism can grow while leaving little structural economic development in host countries.
The relevant question is no longer just how many tourists arrive, but how much economic value effectively remains in the local economy. This is where the main challenges highlighted by this article emerge: to maximize local benefits, it is crucial to strengthen complementary industries, foster regional integration, and enhance digital sovereignty, avoiding a tourism model that benefits external economies instead of local ones.
Tourism as a Productive Network, Not an Isolated Sector
Tourism is not a simple industry. It is a network that links air and land transport, hospitality, commerce, financial services, digital platforms, telecommunications, logistics, food suppliers, energy, and technology. Every link in this chain defines who captures the value generated by visitor spending.
The article shows that in Latin America, a significant portion of the value created by tourism does not remain in the host countries or in the region, but rather flows to economies outside the region. On average, only about 10% of the value added generated outside each country stays within Latin America; the rest is directed to the rest of the world. This reflects a structural pattern: Latin American tourism is more connected to global value chains than to regional or local ones.
More Integration Does Not Always Mean More Benefits
One of the most counterintuitive findings is that the countries most integrated into the regional tourism network — such as Chile, Brazil, or Bolivia — are also the ones with the highest net transfers of value to the outside. In other words, they participate more but capture less. In contrast, countries like Argentina or Colombia manage to retain a larger share of the value generated, despite having lower relative integration levels.
This phenomenon is linked to what economists call “value leakage”: when strategic tourism inputs — airlines, hotel chains, digital platforms, financial services — are controlled by external actors, tourism spending enters the country but quickly exits in the form of payments to international providers.
From a public policy perspective, this is key: it is not enough to attract demand if the productive structure does not allow value capture. Even more challenging is attracting tourism value added generated outside the country.
Transport and Hospitality: Critical Nodes in the Chain
The sectoral analysis clearly identifies the main channels through which value-added exits occur:
- Air transport
- Hotels and restaurants
- Land transport
These sectors concentrate the largest share of external transfers in nearly all the countries analyzed. These are not “problematic” sectors but strategic ones. The difference lies in who owns the assets, who provides the services, and where the decision-making and billing centers are located.
When airlines, hotel chains, or booking platforms are mostly foreign-owned, the host country retains employment and activity but loses the ability to appropriate the economic surplus. The goal is not import substitution, but rather to improve the quality of local productive chains or develop exportable value niches.
The Risk of Low-Impact Tourism
The main message of the study is clear: tourism can grow without becoming a true engine of development. This occurs when most tourism inputs are imported, and there is no capacity for domestic production in any segment of the value chain.
Currently, the sector’s digitalization is controlled by external platforms; local productive linkages are weak; tourism innovation is underdeveloped; and the offer is focused on volume rather than value. In this context, tourism generates employment, but with low productivity; generates income, but with high leakage; and gains international visibility, but with little impact on economic sophistication.
A Paradigm Shift for Tourism Policy
Traditionally, public policies have focused on international promotion, country branding, and physical infrastructure. These continue to be necessary but are no longer sufficient. A second layer of public policy is needed: a productive development policy applied to tourism.
This involves viewing tourism as an economic ecosystem, not just a commercial activity. Some strategic lines become essential:
- Strengthening Local Supplier Chains: From food to tech services, the goal must be to increase the local content of tourism spending. This requires supplier development programs, quality certification, financing, and public-private collaboration.
- Focusing on Value, Not Just Volume: Experience-based tourism, scientific tourism, advanced cultural tourism, sustainable, wellness tourism and convention tourism allow for capturing more value per visitor with less pressure on infrastructure and natural resources.
- Smart Regional Integration: Today Latin America functions more as an exporter of tourism value outward than as an integrated bloc. Improving intraregional air connectivity, joint promotion, and the development of regional value chains could help retain more value within the bloc.
- Building Local Digital Capabilities: The tourism economy is increasingly digital. Platforms, data, payment systems, and online marketing define much of the business. Without local technological capacities, tourism becomes dependent on external intermediaries. The challenge is to look at the global chain and excel in a segment of it.
The Challenge for Chile
Chile appears in the study as a country highly integrated into the regional tourism network but also among those with the highest net value transfers abroad. This calls for a strategic rethinking.
For a small and open country like Chile, tourism can be a strategic sector—but only if it succeeds in increasing productivity, enhancing technological and advanced services content, strengthening local supplier companies, and integrating tourism with innovation, smart cities, and territorial development. Otherwise, tourism growth will continue to provide economic flow but with low structural impact on income, productive capacities, and economic sophistication.
This kind of analysis highlights the value of approaching tourism from economic evidence and not just from promotion. The relevant question for decision-makers is not only how many tourists arrive, but how the value chain that receives them is organized.
Decisions on air regulation, investment incentives, supplier development, sector digitalization, and regional articulation are not isolated technical choices—they are economic policy decisions that determine whether tourism will be a development engine or merely a transient source of income. Latin America does not suffer from a lack of tourism appeal. It suffers from a value capture problem.
Tourism can continue to grow, but without structural changes, it will keep exporting a significant share of its wealth outside the region. Turning it into a development engine requires more sophisticated public policies, long-term vision, and smart integration between academia, the private sector, and the state. Ultimately, the challenge is not just to bring in more tourists. The real challenge is to ensure that when the tourist leaves, the value stays.
