Two world biggest events
Brazil
is preparing for major tourist invasion as
two of the world’s biggest sporting events are scheduled to be
held in the country in the coming years. The 2014 World Cup is the
first global football championship held
in South America in almost 40 years and the first Olympic Summer Games ever will be staged in
Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
Country visitors
According to the country’s tourist board Brazil
is expecting twice the
number of visitors that it has in normal years. In 2010, about 5 million visitors
came to the South American country. That is a very low number compared to
France which has almost 80 million visitors a year and the US with 60 million.
Reasons why Brazil is not so popular
There
are two main reasons why Brazil has not been a popular tourist attraction over
the years. For one, it is very far away from Europe and flight costs make it an
expensive place to go to and secondly the country’s crime rate has been scaring off many potential tourists.
Brazil
improvements
Brazil’s
economy is booming and
the money that it is generating is
being invested in infrastructure and
projects for the future. Airports are being improved, roads are
being built and public
transportation expanded. New hotels are being constructed and
more and more people are being employed and
trained to handle the influx of
tourists in the coming years.
Visitors’ expectation
Over
half a million visitors are expected to come to Brazil during the World Cup in
2014. Tourist organizations hope that many of them will get a lasting impression
of the country so that they might come back sometime. The Brazilian government hopes that
successful sporting events will give the country a major boost in tourism, like the Sydney Olympics did in 2000 or the World
Cup in South Africa in 2010.
As
12 cities prepare to host the
matches of the football World Cup Brazil wants to show the world that it cannot
only play football and dance to samba rhythms but also organize high-scale events.
