Caribbean & Central America - November 2025

On 2 October the Central America Tourism Agency (Cata), a non-profit international organisation that brings together tourism authorities from Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panamá and the Dominican Republic, launched a new marketing strategy that aims to boost visitor numbers by presenting the seven countries that it promotes as a single, connected destination.

Cata launched its new “Centroamérica Your Gateway” strategy at an event in Madrid, Spain. The initiative is built around promoting multi-destination travel in the region by emphasising sustainability, connectivity and competitiveness. “Central America is more than a destination: it's a gateway to transformative experiences, where every kilometre travelled offers a new way of understanding time and connecting with the world,” said Boris Iraheta, Cata’s secretary general, in Madrid.

The campaign draws on elements such as cacao, rum, and the region’s biodiversity, from dense jungle to active volcanoes, as well as historic sites such as Mayan ruins in Guatemala’s northern Petén department and in Honduras’ western department of Copán. It aims to further boost visitor numbers, which reached more than 28.9m in 2024, and tourism revenues, which have surpassed US$30bn per year, according to Cata figures cited by the international media. Iraheta said that the campaign is expected to boost visitor numbers by 6% by the end of 2025, primarily by targeting travellers from European markets such as Germany, Spain, France, Italy, the UK, and the Netherlands. “We are trying to drive visitor numbers in the region, reducing distances with direct flights,” said Iraheta at the launch event in Madrid, adding that airlines such as Air France, Spain’s Iberia and Air Europa, and Colombia’s Avianca will facilitate connections. “At the moment we receive tourists from the US, Canada, the regional market and Europe, primarily Spain, but we hope that flows increase,” he said.

Cata has also been working with the Secretaría de Integración Turística Centroamericana (Sitca) tourism integration authority, the Managua-based permanent office of the Consejo Centroamericano de Turismo (CCT) regional tourism council, which is made up of the tourism ministers of the aforementioned seven countries, as well as Costa Rica, on a joint plan to promote the Sistema Integrado Centroamericano de Calidad y Sostenibilidad (Siccs), a quality and sustainability certification system that aims to improve the competitiveness of tourism businesses.

However, while these efforts are welcome, myriad challenges remain. First of all, a lack of true political coordination, as suggested by the existence of multiple organisations all ostensibly working towards the same goal, will likely hold back integration efforts, risking duplication and the poor allocation of limited resources. Regional fora are generally weak, and relations are strained between governments of different ideological stripes, hamstringing high level discussions.

There are also longstanding issues with connectivity in the region. This is due in part to infrastructure deficits, which lead to traffic congestion and longer journey times, as well as security issues, which discourage many tourists from embarking on long overland trips.

• Nicaragua

Deepening repression in Nicaragua has dampened interest in visiting the country: according to Sitca figures slightly more than 1m tourists entered Nicaragua in 2024, a 9.7% decrease compared to 2023. As the country sits in the middle of the region and covers the entire width of the isthmus, it constitutes a barrier to those who may have otherwise been interested in traveling overland through the region.

Intraregional air travel is also limited by comparatively high costs, with research from the World Bank (WB) published in April 2024 finding that tickets are up to three times more expensive than equivalent journeys in South America. Researchers cite limited competition, which in turn is partly due to high airport fees on regional tickets, discouraging the entry of new airlines and the creation of new routes. Cutting these fees throughout the region has the potential to greatly improve connectivity, according to the WB, but the prospects of doing so are slim as attempts to reduce these fees have been limited by worries over competition between countries. For example, in February, Costa Rica’s President Rodrigo Chaves vetoed a bill that aimed to promote low-cost flights by cutting taxes, arguing that it would encourage tourists to spend less time in Costa Rica by making it easier for them to visit regional peers.

This self-interest is understandable to a certain extent considering the fact that Costa Rica has succeeded in achieving the highest rate of spending per visitor of any country in the region, according to an analysis from US multinational payment card services firm Mastercard published in late September, consolidating its status as a premium destination favoured by wealthier tourists. However overall visitor numbers are down this year [EB-25-09], and some tourism operators warn they are facing a crisis, sparking renewed debate over the direction of a key economic sector.

It could also be argued that the status quo allows each country to have more control over the kind of tourism it wants to attract. For example, Guatemala has had some success in developing health and wellness tourism, which brought in US$90.6m in revenue in 2024, up 8% from the previous year according to the Asociación Guatemalteca de Exportadores (Agexport) export association. Officials may prefer to target this kind of high-value added sector rather than budget travel, which is increasingly linked to concerns around overtourism. As a result, Cata may succeed in encouraging some wealthier European travellers to visit multiple countries on their trip to Central America, but a 6% increase in visitor numbers seems unlikely given the high cost of intraregional air travel and the various factors limiting longer overland trips.