Nicaraguan seeks to woo UK travellers with new campaign

The Latin American Travel Association, in collaboration with the Nicaraguan Tourism Board, has launched a #NicaraguaisOpen tourism campaign.

The campaign aims to promote Nicaragua’s widespread tourism offering and create engagement with the travel trade, as well as growing visitor numbers following a period of uncertainty for the country.

In 2017, Nicaragua was a booming tourism destination with the first four months showing year-on-year growth in overnight visitor numbers of 28 per cent –  making it the second fastest growing destination in the Americas at the time.

Visitor numbers climbed to almost two million that year.

However, following a failed coup attempt, many of Nicaragua’s main markets enforced stringent travel advice, which had a major impact on the local travel industry.

In February this year, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office relaxed its travel advice to Nicaragua, meaning that travel could resume to the country.

Following this, LATA initiated a round table discussion with key tour operators to address questions they had about the destination and set up a FAM trip showcasing the destination first-hand to influential members of the travel industry.

The #NicaraguaIsOpen campaign in the latest step to rebuild the industry.

Many projects have been completed or are underway that aim to improve the infrastructure and drive tourism to the industry.

For example, construction has now been completed on a trans-Nicaraguan highway running from Bluefields on the Caribbean coast to Managua near the Pacific coast.

Ricardo Carioni, deputy ambassador from Nicaragua to the UK, said: “We are delighted to launch this campaign in collaboration with LATA.

“We are very proud of our country’s tourism offering and together with our fellow Nicaraguans, we look forward to welcoming UK visitors with open arms.”