The Bonaire site Amigoe Nieuws tells us Bonaire, a Dutch island off the Venezuelan coast, got a record number of foreign tourists last year. More Europeans, more Canadians and more US Americans arrived at Bonaire in 2010 than in 2009.
There was one country that sent less tourists: Venezuela. There were 58% Venezuelan tourists less than in 2009. Do you want to know why? Because Venezuelans' real income was going down, because Venezuela was in recession, unlike the rest of the region, and because in Venezuela, like in the former Soviet Union, there is no free currency exchange but the whims of the Boliburguesia. This happens even if oil prices were several times higher than on any year before the military came to power in 1999.
Nothing again national tourism...I have written a lot about the need for Venezuela to promote national tourism...but it seems we have to examine in a new light the current government's motto for promoting national tourism: Venezuela, your destiny is to know it.
Ps. I also wrote a post on national tourism in Spanish here.