You know it: tourism marketing sells destinations by remarking some kind of easily identifiable attribute. Buenos Aires is tango, Brazil is samba, etc. Some may think such promotion empoverishes the destinations and eliminates many location’s diversities. But the actors of the touristic field can defend themselves. They’ll say “you have to promote the destination somehow” and that implies to define a series of values to be communicated. Much of this could be seen at the Feria Internacional de Turismo - FIT (International Fair of Tourism) that took place this last weekend at Buenos Aires: tango dancers at the Buenos Aires stand, salsa dancers at the Cuba stand, samba dancers at the Brazil stand…

But let’s go out of the “touristic essentialism” (that fiction by which nations have “typical forms of being”). Let’s turn to a more practical point of view: how useful is it for the public to go to these kind of events?

First, we have to remember that the main interest of the FIT is to relate the actors of the tourism field to allow them to close deals. In second place, there’s the public. What was there for them? A strong presence of argentinean provinces, even those who traditionally hadn’t enforced tourism in the past, Brazil and Uruguay. A huge number of brochures were handed to the public, and you could see people walking around carrying large bags with all sorts of papers. In particular, my interest in maps made me look for them everywhere, and found very interesting presents at the Bolivia, Peru, Paraguay and some argentineand provinces stands. For those who wanted to visit a determined destination, there was a well set up informative structure, including hotel costs in different areas, or at least some phone number or email for contact. The only problem is that the fair was held a little late, almost ends of november, and by this time most people who go on vacations have already decided their destination. But it is work that can show its results next year, when tourists decide where to go. By the way, there were also U.S.A, Europe and Asia stands.

I still have a mountain of maps, brochures and diverse ads carefully bagged and I should probably sit down sometime to look at them all and decide which things are worth keeping. Seeing a big number of destinations in one place, besides, allows us to observe the bets made the different actors in the tourism market. With a more expensive dollar rate in relation to the rest of the region, many argentineans still find it too expensive to travel abroad. For this reason, there still is an interesting possibility for the argentinean provinces to catch local travellers. Everything indicates this summer will be very busy, with a large number of people, locals and foreigners, moving around argentinean territory.

Now, is it worth going? Surely, most of the brochures are worthless, but there’s a certain number of information that will be really useful. For example, you’ll be able to get maps and many references about hotels and lodges in certain places. Which is good information worth keeping to be used when we decide to visit those destinations.

I’ve made a small photo album about the event which can be seen at my gallery (still under slow construction, by the way; spanish only).