Spotlight on Brazil: The Regions and States Fuelling Tourism Growth
Brazil is experiencing a remarkable resurgence as a sought-after tourism destination — with its diverse landscapes, vibrant culture, and warm hospitality sparking renewed global interest. However, the country also faces challenges from global uncertainties, shifting travel patterns, and environmental concerns.
Navigating these hurdles requires a delicate balance between fostering sustainable tourism practices, addressing infrastructure needs, and adapting to evolving traveller expectations. As Brazil aims to continue its upward trajectory in the tourism sector, addressing these challenges becomes crucial to maintaining a resilient and thriving travel landscape.
To do so, DMOs and travel-dependent organisations need access to accurate, reliable and timely data — segmented at a granular level. That’s precisely where ForwardKeys excels. In this series of four articles focusing on Brazil, we will explore how our data can be leveraged to reveal the patterns, trends and insights behind changing global air traveller behaviour, offering unmatched strategic value to destinations.
Regional Competitors Outperform Brazil in Q1
Analysis of forward-looking tickets for arrival dates in Q1 2024 reveals that while Brazil is seeing growth over the same period in 2023, it is being substantially outperformed by both Colombia and Argentina. Regional travel — from other South American countries into Brazil — is up (+23%) but Colombia (+29%) and especially Argentina (+57%) see much larger increases. A similar picture holds for travel from the United States, where impressive growth in arrivals to Colombia (+52%) overshadows Argentina’s otherwise impressive performance (+28%) and dwarfs the modest growth shown by Brazil (+15%).
Looking at travel from Canada, Brazil has seen a decrease (-5%) while Colombia (+34%) and Argentina (+17%) show healthy growth. For travel from the EU27 countries and the United Kingdom, the difference is less stark, however, Brazil (+21%) still trails its neighbours Argentina (+31%) and Colombia (+38%) by a significant margin.
International Arrivals to the South Region Grow Faster than Average
The healthy overall growth in international arrivals to Brazil masks inequality at the regional level. While more tourism-oriented destinations are driving countrywide growth, others are performing more modestly. In the case of the Midwest Region (-11%) international arrivals are actually lower in Q1 2024 than the same period in 2023. The Northeast Region (+13%) shows an encouraging increase, but the main contributors are the Southeast (+23%), North (+26%), and South (+34%) Regions.
Interestingly, while the South Region emerges as the clear leader in overall growth — when the data is interrogated at the source market level, only the Southeast Region scores positive growth from each of the four major source markets (South America, USA, Canada and EU27/UK). Apart from the Midwest, all other regions have seen a growth in arrivals from the EU27 and UK source markets, but along with the Midwest Region, Northeast, North and South Brazil have seen significant losses elsewhere — with growth from South American source markets being the deciding contributor to overall increases.
Santa Catarina: Growth in Arrivals Outperforms Other States
Comparing Q1 2024/Q1 2023 international arrivals at a state level, Santa Catarina (+53) stands out from the crowd — clearly contributing to the impressive overall growth seen in the South Region. States in the high-growth Southeast Region are also well represented at the top of the table, including Sao Paulo (+25%), Rio de Janeiro (+23%) and Minas Gerais (+18%). A surprising inclusion is the state of Rio Grande do Norte (+46%) which shows almost double the growth of its parent region — Northeast Brazil.
The analyses presented above underline the importance to DMOs of accessing data that is not only accurate and up to date but also granular and segmentable. While the high-level picture for travel to Brazil in Q1 is encouraging compared to the previous year, at a regional and state level we see significant variance — and for destinations within those regions, understanding that difference is crucial to their strategy.
Stay tuned for more in-depth insights as we navigate through some of the wider factors affecting Brazil’s tourism performance — revealing why quality data is the key to success in a rapidly evolving and highly competitive global tourism landscape.