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Economic from Riyadh
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Snow tops the mountains, but the skiers are absent, while San Carlos de Bariloche station, one of the most famous ski resorts in South America, remains deserted during the winter season in the Southern Hemisphere due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We have been closed and have absolutely no activity,” said Beilin Garcia Burtona, 36, who has run a family-owned hotel for three generations in the city and heads the tourism authority.
According to “French”, San Carlos de Bariloche is located 1,800 kilometers southwest of Buenos Aires, overlooking a magnificent lake and is the fourth tourist destination in Argentina for foreigners. And arrivals from Brazil and Uruguay in second place after Buenos Aires, among their favorite destinations, according to the interests of owners of tourist companies.
In the early 2020s, when the Covid-19 epidemic was still seemingly far away, Bariloche dreamed of improving the excellent results she had recorded last season when 112,000 tourists came to leave at her hotels, including 15,000 on direct flights from Brazil.
“The city is beautiful, indeed wonderful, it is heavy snow, but it is a city without tourists now,” said Jose Libya, 46, the owner of a restaurant in Cerro Catedral, with distress.
20 km from the center of Bariloche, Cerro Catedral Ski Resort boasts 120 km of terraces over an area of 600 hectares. At this stage of the year, preparations for the new season are on a hot flame. However, this year the Covid-19 pandemic prevented this.
Last March 20, mandatory stone was imposed on 44 million Argentines. The measures have since been relaxed in a large part of the country, but it has been reinforced again in and around Buenos Aires as casualties rise.
But the borders remain closed and commercial flights are suspended.
“We have had a ski school for 22 years and it is the first time that we find ourselves without tourists,” says Nestor Lopez Davalos, president of the Cerro Catedral Entrepreneur Association. “We’ve learned a lot of things: volcanic ash + H1N1 + and Hanta virus. But what We are seeing unbelievable now! “
In 2009, the H1N1 + flu affected the school tourism season, which is a major sector of the city’s economy, which receives throughout the year between 80 and one hundred thousand high school students who come to celebrate their high school diplomas and occupy nightclubs.
In 2011, the city’s airport was closed for several months due to the ash clouds caused by the Puyehu volcano 90 km away. A local hotspot for the Hanta virus resulted in 11 deaths in a nearby town and deported tourists in 2018.
But Beilin García Britin cites his father’s memories to say that he must return to the year 1978 when Argentina and Chile were about to face an armed conflict over a border dispute, to see Bariloche whose population was three times less, without any tourists.
Of course, the economic consequences will be catastrophic in a country essentially suffering from a pre-pandemic crisis.
Nestor Lopez Davalos expresses his fear that many people will lose their jobs.
In Bariloche with a population of 140 thousand people, tourism provides about 15 thousand direct jobs and 34 thousand indirect, according to the Tourism Authority, which estimates the losses in July, which is the best month of the year in general, at 3.6 billion pesos (42 billion euros).
“The future is murky. We do not know what the health protocol we will have to follow when we resume our activities … this is if we resume it,” said restaurant owner Jose Libio.
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