Tourism as a source of employment and foreign exchange income for Venezuela

June 2021 and to this date Venezuela has practically lost what until now had been its main source of foreign exchange income: oil, due to the reduction of its production and the purchases of its main customers. This fact opens up a new reality for the country, hard, difficult to handle because in the short term there is no different possibility of income that compensates for what was lost.

Venezuela must, therefore, agonizingly, find in the medium term other foreign exchange earnings other than oil in order to survive. The basic industries of Guayana producers of iron, steel, aluminum and electricity, which could be an alternative source of income, are sadly bankrupt and with no possibility of recovery in the short term. Agriculture, which would be another possible source of income, is prostrate, practically destroyed and would require significant time and investment to recover. Venezuela also does not have industrial or technological capacity in the field of information technology, which is today another of the great wealth-generating areas in the world.

But Venezuela does have great tourist potential because it has beautiful beaches, jungle, plains and mountains with snow, all in about 1 million square kilometers. But what it does not have is tourist culture or awareness of the importance of tourism for each of the citizens and for the country as a whole.

The first thing to do, then, is to create that awareness. Understand that oil is no longer the only money box where the money for everything will come from and that tourism can be a very important way for the country to survive.

To achieve these objectives requires: a) awareness of the government b) awareness of tourism entrepreneurs and c) a Great Information Program that involves the population in the objective of promoting and protecting tourism. It is, therefore, to develop a Great Tourism Plan whose central objectives are the participation and help of the population through education for tourism, the improvement of infrastructure and, most important of all, the total, absolute safety of tourists, because no one go to a country where they are a victim of crime or where speculation is practiced against tourists.

In tourism, Venezuela therefore has the possibility of finding part of the income lost in oil and, consequently, a source of wealth, employment and well-being. The possibility of achieving it remains in the hands of Venezuelans committed to their own personal progress and to the progress of the country.