Inbound international trends – from Peru to Latin America to the world

Transcript

Neil Glynn:Thank you all for your time. So our panel is focused on inbound international travel. My name is Neil Glynn. I'm a managing director at Alvarez Marsal, and I'll hand over to each panelist to introduce yourselves. And I think it'd be a great idea to highlight a fun fact about your career to help everyone everybody get to know you if they haven't over the past couple of days.

Rocky Lo:Hello everyone. Hello everyone. Hello, here we go. Hello everyone, good afternoon, and my name is Rocky Low. I'm the Managing Director for International Sales for Air Canada. Myself and my team look after all points of sale outside of Canada and USA into Canada and USA. And fun fact about me, the first time I came to Peru, It's 20 years ago, I was a cabin crew for Air Canada, and I have opportunity to fly to Lima as a cabin crew, and I have 48-hour layover. Fast forward 20 years after, I get to come to this beautiful country again, and this time around it's also 48 hours, but I get to attend this very informative CAPA conference, and also getting ready for our nonstop direct flight that will be starting in December, From Lima to Toronto and Montreal.

Neil Glynn:Thank you, Rocky.

Mitzi Berberi:So my name is Nikki Burberry.

Audience:I'm the Chief Business Development Officer for Kiwi.com.

Mitzi Berberi:If I speak louder—

Rocky Lo:there we go.

Audience:Is this working?

Mitzi Berberi:You want to go? Is this working? Okay, super.

Neil Glynn:Hi.

Audience:Right.

Mitzi Berberi:So my name is Mitzi Burbury. I'm the Chief Business Development Officer at Kiwi.com. We're an online travel agency, for those of you who don't know us and have been wondering why your lanyards say Kiwi.com. Fun fact about me and my career. So I started in this role on July 1st, and unlike most of the people that I've met in the industry who've been in travel for 10 years I'm only on my 3rd year, so I'm hoping this is promising and a very long career where we can spend more time together coming up.

Kamal Hadad:I am Kamal Haddad, Vice President of Network Planning for LATAM Airlines Group. I've been with LATAM for 20 years. Something interesting about me, I am Chilean. I was born in Brazil. My family is from the Middle East, and I've been traveling a lot for 20 years because I work in the airline industry. So always when I go to the US, they have a lot of questions about me and my history of traveling and everything.

Maria del Sol Velásquez:Hi, I'm María del Sol Velázquez. I am the Director of Promotion at PROMPERÚ. PROMPERÚ is a tourism board that promotes tourism, exports, and investment of Peru. Something funny about me, I cannot think about something, but hopefully you may understand or could understand my English. I'm very sorry if I'm not that clear.

Audience:Go ahead.

Roxana Puente:Hello, everyone. My name is Roxana. I work at the WTTC. The WTTC is the only body that represents all the private industry, and that includes all the ecosystem of our industry, from airlines, airports, but also hotels, OTAs, et cetera. A fun fact about me, maybe, well, I started my career working at the Mexico Tourism Board, and from then I worked at Destination Canada. So I went to work with the competition, which was very valued in Canada. And now I'm working for an international body that works with all the ecosystem of the industry.

Neil Glynn:Great, thank you all. And to hold up my end of the bargain, so I'm currently working as a consultant with the US company Alvarez Marsal, albeit based in London. This is my 3rd different segment of the aviation value chain. I started in aircraft leasing, then moved into investment banking, and it's now consulting. So we've heard over the course of the last couple of days some very interesting perspectives. We've heard that travel or traffic is still below pre-COVID levels. We've heard a number of parties comment on the high level of taxation, but we've also heard about very strong and compelling growth opportunities for traffic. So I thought I'd start with— we have 4 different segments of the value chain represented across our 5 panelists. I thought it'd be interesting to start with what Peru means to each panelist and what differentiates it from the rest of the region. Rocky, maybe to start with you.

Rocky Lo:I think when we evaluate Peru as a destination that Air Canada wants to fly to, we see a mix of traffic in this place. Obviously, no surprises, there's a lot of leisure demand, Lots of tourists love to come here to see all the historical attraction like the Machu Picchu. We also see corporate demand from Canada coming over here, specifically the mining business, as well as the VFR traffic, which is also a very resilient segment of traffic, especially during COVID We have seen that when all the leisure traveller, corporate traveller are not travelling, the VFR traveller is still travelling. Obviously, there's a huge Peruvian community in Canada, USA, as well as Europe. When we decided to launch our Lima, Montreal, and Toronto flight, we actually set our schedule to be very timely connected with our flight to Europe. When I look at this winter, we do serve over 2 dozen destinations into and from Europe. So customer can easily connect via our Toronto and Montreal hub to come to Lima or come from Lima to go to Europe via Toronto and Montreal.

Neil Glynn:Thank you, Mitzi.

Mitzi Berberi:All right. Is this one working?

Maria del Sol Velásquez:No, it's not work. There you go.

Mitzi Berberi:It is? Okay, perfect. We're back on. So what Peru means to me.

Neil Glynn:What Peru means to you and what differentiates it from the rest of the region?

Mitzi Berberi:I would say that I associate Peru with excellent food. I thought about it before, and then even when I got here, I realized that it's not just a myth, it's actually a reality. And then from a business standpoint, I would say I was very surprised when I looked at the numbers and how important the Lima-Cusco route is. For us, I would say it's it's such a huge trip. I think like you were saying to go to Machu Picchu, that's the number one destination that people pick when coming to Peru, and the fact that we have that connectivity that goes from Europe to Lima and then enables people to then live their dream and and discover the nature and the beauty of Peru. That's probably what I associate it with most.

Kamal Hadad:For Latam. Peru is very, very important. Lima in particular is our second biggest hub after São Paulo Guarulhos. We have here in Peru more than 50 aircraft, 40 narrowbody, 10 widebodies. We operate our hub here to connect international. We cover Caribbean. USA, Madrid. And also we have an important presence in the domestic market. In domestic market, we have 65% of the capacity share in domestic Peru. Lima-Cusco, by far the most important route. We operate more than 25 frequencies per day in the Lima-Cusco. So I hope if you are going to Cusco after the conference, you travel with LATAM.

Maria del Sol Velásquez:Well, what can I say? I work for the promotion agency that promotes actually Peru. I guess for us, for the Peruvians, Peru is unique. It's unique because of our diversity, because of our gastronomy that you had a chance to try, probably because our living culture that we have. We believe Peru actually has everything in just one territory. You have coast, you have the Andes, you have jungle, so you can find it all here in just one destination. Probably you have to—

Audience:there.

Mitzi Berberi:Thank you.

Roxana Puente:So Maria just mentioned one of the things that I was going to mention as well, but Peru is one of those places that makes you feel welcome. I think all destinations have a unique magic, and one of Peru is that it has everything, but it also makes you feel welcome. So when people come to Peru, they enjoy all the things that they are doing along the day. It's one of the magics of being here.

Rocky Lo:I think also Peru, right, like, um, strategically from a South American perspective, is located right at central west of South America, especially for some of the long-haul travelers from Canada or from Europe. They will not just come to Peru for a weekend. They will come to South America for a week or 2 weeks trip. They will be able to come to Lima first, Peru first, and then they can connect for the rest of South America and tour around the rest of South America. The location itself, from a geographic perspective, is also very strategically located.

Neil Glynn:Absolutely. And just, I'll take the opportunity to highlight that we can see Slido, so if anything prompts a comment or if you have any questions that arise through the session, we can try to weave it in. Otherwise, we can also handle that at the end, so please feel free to contribute to Slido. We'll move on then in terms to sources of traffic, sources of demand. So maybe to start with Maria at the origin. How do you approach stimulating demand into Peru, and what's your strategy or PROMPERÚ's strategy?

Maria del Sol Velásquez:Well, as you all know, right now we haven't reached yet the numbers that we were supposed to reach after pandemic. We have to reach the tourists, the cost. We have lots of strategies going on right now. The first one is sustainability. The second one is bring to Peru events of this type of events so you can know what's Peru about, impact events. It's diversification of the offer of Peru. Peru has so many things to offer, not only Machu Picchu, but it's well known as Machu Picchu, as you may know, but there's much more to see. That's one of the other strategies we have going on right now to grow that tourism. Also, like I mentioned, high-impact events. We are actually working together with the airlines, with the airport to impulse connectivity, because as you know, Peru is still battling that problem of connectivity. We're going to events where we can promote connectivity. We're bringing events of connectivity too. We're working with airlines, with strategic alliances, giving them some incentives with promotions so they can see our destination that is attractive. As you may know, Peru was one of the countries that actually opened late after the pandemic. That's something that actually brought us to where we are right now, because most of the countries, they opened much earlier, so the airlines decided to go to routes that were much more economic. They had much more an economic impact, of course. The routes were much more rentable. When Peru opened, the airlines were already— they already decided which routes they were going to operate, and Peru wasn't on their mind. What happened after that? There's a lack of aircraft, as you know, as they mentioned.

Roxana Puente:Yes.

Maria del Sol Velásquez:Yesterday. If we want to have more connectivity, most of the airlines tell us, you know what, we don't have enough aircraft right now. Not only that, also we have a lack of connectivity intra-regional. We have 21 routes regional that come from Lima to all the destinations inside of Peru, but only 5 routes that connect intra-regional. We bring the tourists, they can do different routes inside Peru, but they have to come back to Lima, and that actually is not such a good experience for the tourists. I mean, they want to go to Cusco, and from Cusco, probably they want to go to Iquitos, to the jungle directly. They don't want to go through again to Lima, and that's something that we have to work on that. Those things are the problems that we're having right now to get to the numbers that we want.

Neil Glynn:Yes, understood. Moving on to the airline side, maybe starting with Kamal, how does LATAM approach Whether to place an extra aircraft in Peru versus other options, given that you cover the entire region?

Kamal Hadad:LATAM is a group of airlines, so we have the benefit of the diversification. Aircraft, and as Maria said before, we have some scarcity of aircraft, so it's a difficult decision where to put the aircraft, and we can move it around Between Brazil, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia, the affiliates that we have. To take the decision is always a trade-off between our strategy that we have in each country, also, of course, profitability, and the future opportunities that we see in the markets that I think we're going to discuss further later.

Neil Glynn:Rocky, re-entry into Peru is obviously the flavor of the day for Air Canada. Can you give us a bit of background in terms of how you think about Peru now being re-added to your network?

Rocky Lo:I think it's a very exciting addition within our global network. As I mentioned, coming out from the pandemic, we start to rebuild our network, and we are very strong on our transatlantic operation. We do have a joint venture with United and Lufthansa Group. We do fly to a lot of destinations ourselves over the transatlantic. During the wintertime, traditionally, there's not a lot of demand compared to summer for transatlantic traffic. However, adding Lima into our route map and the rest of all the expansion we are doing in this region, we are seeing growing demand from this region to Europe and from Europe. Again, Even for Peru itself, the middle class clearly is rising based on the data we are seeing, and Peruvians want to travel abroad. During the summer, we all know when you go to Europe, it's full of people, hotel prices are very expensive, and it's very crowded. In the wintertime, actually, it's a perfect timing from a price perspective, from a logistic perspective to go to Europe. Again, having Lima on our route map is going to help us to connect customers, not just to and from Canada, but it's also to the rest of our European network.

Neil Glynn:Great. Mitzi, just following on that connectivity point, what's Kiwi's perspective on Peru?

Mitzi Berberi:In terms of connectivity, they really don't like me today. I think I'm on. It's good. Thank you. In terms of connectivity, I think we've had different different viewpoints. So one is connectivity domestically and within the region. The other one is with Canada. And then what Kiwi prides itself on is virtual interlining, essentially. So it's really connecting Europe to the region here and Peru specifically. You can do it through airline relationships or you can do it through an OTA. And I'd say probably what we want to add to it is the customer viewpoint. So yes, we're the travel agent, but we also are the ones that help promote the region and help with connectivity between airlines and bringing people from Europe down to Latin America and Peru specifically.

Neil Glynn:Great, thank you. Roxana, you obviously focus across the whole region, so how does Peru fit in from your perspective?

Roxana Puente:From my perspective and also from WTTC, we always encourage the public and private cooperation. Here in the region, for a long time, we have been encouraging trying to work together as destinations. Everyone was talking about a regional focus, and mostly destinations don't tend to work together. Mostly in Latin America, they see each other as competition, but your neighbor is not always your competition. It can be always someone who can help you grow. As an example, and a very clear example, is Europe, who has grown as a circuit together. And once it has become more and more popular, of course, the traveler tries to look for different places within different countries. However, this is something that has not grown that much in Latin America. In the recent years, or lately, I have been speaking with different destinations that understand that and are talking and working together, or trying to work together, among destinations, but I think it's basic to work together among the different destinations.

Neil Glynn:Great, thank you. We've heard, as I touched on earlier, we've heard about high taxes over the last couple of days. That's a segue into the next topic in terms of enablers of traffic growth, as well as the opposite, the detractors or preventers. of traffic growth. Maybe to start with Maria, what do you feel are the key enablers required to stimulate the next leg of traffic recovery within Peru, and what's holding it back?

Maria del Sol Velásquez:What's holding it? For Peru, I believe connectivity, lack of infrastructure regionally from us, like as a destination, Investment. Investment, but also incentives. I think it's very important, talking as part of the government, of course, but the promoting side, if we want to bring more airlines, if we want to bring more events like this, normally this is called the MICE segment, which brings Congress and events, they require incentives.

Roxana Puente:Yes.

Maria del Sol Velásquez:The government has to give those type of incentives to the airlines, to this type of segment, different things that allow us to grow not only in tourism, but as a destination, as Peru as a country. I think that's the main problem right now for us, for tourism, and for the arrivals is the lack of destination, not only international, which is not that much right now, but yes, interregional, that like I mentioned, we are not doing that well. I mean, we have also, we have a huge airport here in Lima, which is amazing, but it's not responding the same at the regions. Our airports regionally, they're not as well. Of course, they're not going to be that big, but there's a lack of infrastructure. Sorry for my English. It's not that good. If we want airlines to come, they don't have I mean, they don't have the infrastructure to get there. The connectivity also between the attractives. I mean, if we want to promote and diversify the destination, we need to get to those attractives. But to get there, you need to have the roads well done, you have to have the services. Those are the things that we're battling right now to promote. I mean, we're promoting, we're diversifying, but we need connectivity and we need the government to work on the infrastructure I see a question on Slido just focused on trade offices within Peru.

Neil Glynn:Is trade a key enabler of incremental passenger connectivity into Peru? Do you see slower government appointments as an issue?

Maria del Sol Velásquez:Well, that's a tricky question right now. I mean, we are having We have OSCEX in diverse destinations, and we know there is still where we need to get more. There's, I think, 5 or 6 places that don't have OSCEX right now, which are the trade offices. The problem here is that there's so many regulations as a state to have done before we appoint those officers. That's another problem that we have as a country, the bureaucracy, All the small steps that you have to get done to have something done. Something that should get 1 month, 2 months, it takes you 6 to 8 months to get something done. This is something actually because it's funny, but it depends on many ministers, not only one, which is I work for the Minister of Tourism and Commerce, but to appoint the trade officers, you also need the permission of our Minister of Foreign Affairs. It's difficult to answer that question. We're working on that. It is important to have our trade officers, yes, but for us, for tourism, what we'd also need is those trade officers to be specialized on tourism. We believe right now, as a tourism board, we have trade officers that are more expert on commerce than in tourism.

Neil Glynn:Understood. Thank you. Kamal, on the subject of taxes or other costs of doing business or costs of growing within this region, how does that influence your network strategy?

Kamal Hadad:Yesterday, I think we talked about the enablers that develop the traffic. So we say government policies, airport taxes, infrastructure. In the case of the inbound, it's important what, for example, entities like PROMPERÚ does. And then you need the competition on the airline developing that. I think in particular in Peru, we have really good competition here, good airlines flying. And the potential actually is there. I was looking yesterday at some numbers. When you, for example, compare number of visitors in Peru and in Latin America in particular, it's around 5 million per year. That's the number of visitors that we have in Latin America in each country. If you compare to countries like France, Italy, 80 million, 70 million.

Audience:Yeah.

Kamal Hadad:One number that is surprising, for example, Iceland, 3 million, very small country. Peru, Brazil, Chile, in my opinion, has much more than many of those countries. The potential is there and we need to work in the enablers for the traffic to develop.

Neil Glynn:Thank you for keeping the questions coming on Slido. There is one here which is maybe a bit Provocative for Kamal. Isn't LATAM protecting its hubs too much? What other new route like Lima-Milan would LATAM launch in the short term?

Kamal Hadad:Thank you, Pedro, for the question. Lima hub is going to— with the new terminal, the capacity is going to grow 50%. That's the endgame with everything included. So my opinion, there is space for anyone who is interested to enter to Peru to come here. We are not protecting, we are competing in all the markets. We have 2 airlines in the domestic, both of them really good, that we are competing with them. And in terms of the Lima-Milan that you're asking, yeah, we agree. Actually, if you compare our position to Europe in Brazil, we fly 8 destinations from Brazil to Europe, and here in Peru we only fly Madrid. So there is a potential to grow more Barcelona, Milan, some other destinations that we can fly in Europe. But the problem in our case is widebody. If there is a scarcity of aircraft for the narrowbody, in the case of the widebody, it's even worse. So it's more about timing than there is no potential, in my opinion.

Rocky Lo:You know, those questions are interesting. A lot of people often ask, when are you launching this new route? When are you launching that route? Obviously, From an airline perspective, we evaluate demand. We look at, do we have enough demand to support that direct long-stop route? In many cases, we cannot get the math right. That example of Lima-Milan, we actually, by us launching the Lima-Montréal route, our timing is well connected to our Montréal-Milan route. Customer can easily, with a one-stop connect, to get to Milan via Montreal. Again, when you are doing connection in Toronto and Montreal, it's all under one terminal. We are seeing some of the customers may consider not to transit in the US for whatever reason, given the current situation. That is another reason why we think there's opportunity for people to connect via Canada to get to places like Milan.

Roxana Puente:Yes.

Mitzi Berberi:That's an excellent point as well, and it's something I think that we we try to promote is that connectivity between different airlines in order to allow more traffic to come to the destination. Yesterday, we heard also about this generation being quite anxious and stressed about everything. Stress comes from price. They're really very price conscious. We heard a lot also yesterday about how these taxes have a negative impact on customers and potential passengers choosing a destination over another. Another one is security. That's, I think, a big piece to look at. Connectivity actually plays to that. In case there is an issue, people want to know that they can get home easily. The fact that there's a good network and connectivity internally will relieve some of those anxieties. I think through these partnerships, through different ways, virtual interlining and just resolving those anxieties, we would see an uptick in traffic to Peru.

Rocky Lo:Great.

Neil Glynn:Thank you. Yes, come on.

Kamal Hadad:Sorry, may I say something else? In our case also, Lima, we have a hub-and-spoke strategy. So every Lima-Milan that we launch is going to be to connect not only for Lima, it's going to connect Montevideo, it's going to connect Asunción, and so on. And we compete, Lima competes with other hubs, with Bogotá for Europe, with Panama for the US, and passengers are not going to pay $20 more because they want to connect in Lima. They don't care. They want to go for the cheaper price available, and it's going to be through Bogotá. The discussion about the connecting fees and all of the discussion that we have in the previous panels is really important in the— as you were asking, Neil, before— of deciding where to put the aircraft because of the competitiveness of the hubs.

Neil Glynn:Absolutely. Thank you. Roxana, just keeping on the topic of enablers, within your work across the region, are there any lessons that Peru could learn from other countries in terms of enabling traffic growth or stimulating demand?

Roxana Puente:Yeah, actually, and I was just thinking about that because before this, I was seeing the numbers. I was 2 years ago here for another conference. I was seeing the numbers back then. We were taking as examples Colombia and Dominican Republic because those were the 2 countries that got to recover first from international visitors. Those are the 2 countries that got to get even more international visitors than domestic. They are recovering, and of course it's not more international visitors now, but in the recovery from 2 years from now, it's been on 7%. But it caught my attention that I was also seeing on the visitor spend, and it had— and comparing to last year, is at 22%, uh, up from last year. So I think that is a very good opportunity, and I see a very good opportunity on who is visiting and who Peru is attracting. Because from what I'm seeing, or from where— from our perspective, they are— that is the dream for a lot of destinations, to attract more travelers who tend to spend more, right? So that is a really good number for the numbers that I'm seeing in Peru, at 22% up against last year.

Rocky Lo:I think for any, you know, new route to be successful, at least from an Air Canada perspective, what we have seen in the past is We do need to work very closely with our tourism board partner, like in this case will be PROMPERÚ, because the tourism board partner is trying to get more visitors and stimulate more demand to grow the market size. From an airline perspective, we're trying to fill our seats profitably, right? We need to work hand in hand to promote the destination, to promote the route in order to get more visitors to come visit.

Audience:Great.

Neil Glynn:Yeah, I'm just conscious of time. We've just less than 9 minutes left. If there are any questions anybody would like to ask in the room, please just raise your hand. I don't want to run out of time, but we can— I'll ask again in a few minutes just in case. Thank you, Rocky. You've actually touched on my next topic, which is partnerships. Clearly a lot of stakeholders within the room, the need for everybody to work together to produce an optimal outcome.

Rocky Lo:Absolutely.

Neil Glynn:The outcome is very apparent. Maybe to start with Kamal on your own partnership with Delta and how that's impacting your growth and connectivity strategy.

Kamal Hadad:With Delta, you said?

Roxana Puente:Yes.

Kamal Hadad:We have a joint business agreement in Peru in particular and in South America as a total with Delta to operate the routes between South America and the US. We are really happy with the joint business that we have that is completing 3 years this October, actually. And in terms of the numbers, actually, when you compare October '22 versus what we are going to fly October 2025, we have grown 60% in terms of the number of flights that we are flying as a whole South America. We have grown 9 new routes. One route that I love to always talk about the potential for us in Latin America is that we are flying Lima-Atlanta as LATAM, that without Delta will be impossible because actually 70% of the traffic are connections.

Roxana Puente:Mm-hmm.

Kamal Hadad:But when you see the traffic that we are moving in those aircraft, 80% are people from the US, so are inbound tourists coming to Peru, going to Cusco, and visiting Latin America. That's, for me, benefit that we are getting directly from the JVA to our countries.

Rocky Lo:I fully agree. Partnership, especially for airlines, is so important. As mentioned earlier, we're only going to start Lima, in December. Today, even though we don't fly into Lima directly, we actually have a codeshare partner with Avianca via Bogotá. In this region, we have a codeshare partner with Avianca, GOL, and Azul. We also have interline partnership with Sky because we don't fly to Cusco ourselves, but we do know there's demand of customers that want to go to Machu Picchu via Lima. We need to work with other airlines that provide a service within this region in order for us to to capture those demands.

Neil Glynn:Maria, how would you describe your approach to partnership with airlines in particular, but also your additional partners beyond the airlines?

Maria del Sol Velásquez:For us, working with the private sector in general is very important as a state. We couldn't have anything done if it wouldn't be for the private sector. If we're talking about airlines, we have our strategic alliances with them. What we intend is to help them promote our country. They have to present a plan of marketing and different type of marketing tools. That's very important for us because we promote the destination with them. They help us bring actually the tourists, of course, but we also doing this type of work, these strategic alliances with airports too, not only with airlines. We're working with LATAM, we're working with other airports internationally to promote the destination abroad. It's very important. Also, we work tightly with the private sector here in Peru because they're, as we said, the motor, the drive that actually help us convert. We can promote, but we need to convert. We need to bring the tourists here, and the private sector is the one.

Neil Glynn:Mitzi, you mentioned virtual interlining earlier. How do you think about the most effective partnerships?

Mitzi Berberi:I think we come complement what the airlines are doing. We're here to increase the reach of airlines. Where those partnerships exist, that's great. Then where they don't, virtual interlining is there to help customers and passengers get to their destinations. We were looking at numbers earlier today, and about 60% of the international passengers 60% of the traffic to Latin America and Peru specifically is from Europe, and then 60% of that is through virtual interlining. We're not here competing with airlines. We're really helping to fill that gap where it doesn't exist. I think they go hand in hand together.

Neil Glynn:Roxana, your perspective?

Roxana Puente:From my perspective, and I would like to also set an example on this is one, because they— we are talking about how destinations can work and incentive and, and encourage people to, to, to invest or attract people to come to their destination. One of the best examples we have seen, and I'm proud to say that it's in the Caribbean with Dominican Republic, that the government from the pandemic and from, from that time opened a lot of incentives to encourage investment on infrastructure, etc. A lot of hoteliers decided to build new hotels. It now has more connectivity. We all know that Arayet has been pivotal on growing this along with the government. They have a structure where they are all working together. That is an example where we can see private and public cooperation. I think that is one of the clearest examples. Another thing is that the private industry has a very good communication with the public industry. That is one of the best examples I have. I would like to mention that there are also— that is not the one. Not all people has to follow the same lead. There are different examples that are good for different destinations. There are many other examples, and working together with other destinations can also make you see what are the best possibilities of doing a good job for your destination.

Neil Glynn:Thank you.

Rocky Lo:I think that's the beauty of our industry. We often call this industry like a sport team, you know, the whole ecosystem. You need to work together, hands in hands, you know, doesn't matter if it's the tourism board, the airport, Our OTA partner, travel agency partner, or other airline partner, our friendly competitor. You need to work together in order to carry that demand and to capture that demand.

Neil Glynn:Absolutely. Just final check whether there's a question in the room.

Audience:No?

Kamal Hadad:Great. Pedro?

Audience:Sorry.

Roxana Puente:Please.

Neil Glynn:Or mic. We've got one coming.

Audience:No, no, we've got one coming, Pedro. Just check. Actually, my question is thanks for, uh, I wanted to ask you, I don't know if you're aware of this, but, uh, there are content creators in the region. In this case, for example, we have the YouTube creator called from Spain, you know, where the whole local travel has been driven by the world of breakfasts, you know, where Peru is actually one of the places where our tacos are from, you know. So actually, I wanted to ask you, uh, what you, your organization, or better said, how the travel ecosystem can tackle this user-generated content from us into more travel From our organization.

Roxana Puente:So what we do is work together along— well, we as an organization, and as most of you know, have as our members almost 200 more important companies and also destinations around the world.

Kamal Hadad:We work—

Roxana Puente:we don't only work for the destinations that are part of WTTC, but we tend to work along with all different destinations. So, for example, in Peru, one of our members is Urbanova, and we have different members in different countries, but we work along together with all different countries to— with all different countries to try to make the best standard regulations for everyone to travel to different countries. So, for example, another thing we advocate for is is, of course, investment and different countries also creating new opportunities to investment, infrastructure, et cetera. An example of that is we have a yearly event that we have in different regions, and that is a decision that we took because, of course, having it on a very different region every year brings opportunity to different— to the region, to the countries, et cetera. to bring the focus of all these stakeholders that go to our event and bring new opportunities to new regions. There's a lot of examples on the things that our summit has brought as benefits for the places that we have been in, and not only for the specific place or the specific destination that we've been in, but also the neighbors or the different destinations that are part as well of the region that we are taking the summit. That is one example, for example.

Neil Glynn:Great, thank you. We're at time, but I thought I'd just check whether María would like to make a final statement.

Maria del Sol Velásquez:Well, actually, that probably I haven't mentioned, even though we haven't reached yet the numbers of tourists arriving to Peru, it's It's good to mention that we have reached the expenditure, I don't know if that's the way you mention in English, of the tourists. We're already on 109% above 2019. What does it mean? The type of tourist that is coming is different. It's a tourist that is staying more time. It's a tourist that probably has another way of seeing—

Roxana Puente:Spending more.

Maria del Sol Velásquez:the experience of tourism is a more sustainable tourist, and that's what we want as a destination. We don't want to be a massive destination. We want to bring quality because we want to— not only we want our country to be known and to be already positioned as one of the best countries in the world because of its culture, its heritage, its nature, But we wanted to be sustainable on our patrimony and natural attractive. I think that's a good conclusion saying that probably you don't need big quantity of tourists. You need the right type of tourists that brings you an economic growth that it's even to the whole country.

Audience:Great.

Neil Glynn:Thank you. Thank you all for listening, and thank you to each one of my panelists.

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