In an interview with the Peruvian Institute of Mining Engineers, Teresa Rubina, president of the Hotel and Restaurant Association of Arequipa (AHORA), tells us about the preparations taking place in Arequipa to receive visitors to PERUMIN 36 from September 25 to 29, 2023.

How important is PERUMIN for Arequipa?                            

For us, it is extremely important because Arequipa welcomes over 5,000 visitors in just one week. Therefore, hotels booking is at 100% or close to 100%. People even use other types of accommodation, like Airbnb.

This benefits not only the hotel industry, but also the restaurant industry, since during the entire week, and the previous weeks, people arrive in order to set up the stands and make visits. This dynamizes the economy a great deal; the average spending increases over that week.

What are the hotel and restaurant sectors’ expectations for PERUMIN 36?

We welcome PERUMIN with great joy and enthusiasm because we are just coming out of two years of being paralyzed due to the pandemic; furthermore, between the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, the situation for the hotel sector was quite difficult due to the protests. Many tourists were not able to come; the highways were blocked.

For these reasons, this edition of PERUMIN is going to be very important for us to get some breathing space and be able to reopen all the hotels that have stopped working these past months owing to the complicated situation.

How many hotels are there is Arequipa and how many guests can they accommodate?

We have approximately two thousand accommodation establishments, so we can accommodate around five thousand people in different categories.

What percentage of Arequipa’s economy does this sector account for and how many workers does it approximately employ?

The tourism sector accounted for 4% of the national GDP before the pandemic. In 2022, however, the percentage was 2.5 and, at present, I cannot give you an exact figure because of the situation affecting Arequipa and the southern cities.

Now, as for employment, direct employment in the sector is also directly related to the inflow of tourists; but let us remember that tourism is transversal, not only does it generate work for hotels, restaurants, and travel agencies, but also taxi drivers, artisans, bakeries, markets, etc. It collaborates with different sectors.

How has the hotel and restaurant sector been affected by the current socio-political situation?

We are a very vulnerable sector; for example, when it rains, planes cannot land and reservations are canceled. When there are strikes and the highways get blocked, this has an impact on reservations.

When it comes to the situation of social unrest experienced over the last two months and a half, it has left a sense of insecurity in the city and has led people who had planned to come to Arequipa, Cusco and Puno to prefer to spend their vacation in a different location, like the north of the country.

The south is currently undergoing a very serious situation; the inflow of tourists is not what it used to be. However, we are working on it, and we need people to know that Arequipa is a beautiful city. It is the only city in the world built with volcanic rock, and it is filled with friendly people who want to welcome tourists.

Tell us about the work that is being done alongside the local and national authorities to improve that situation.

In the month of March, we will start a beautification campaign in Arequipa. It is about the beautification of Arequipa at the hands of the tourism entrepreneurs themselves. Although this is an initiative of AHORA, an organization that I preside over, we have shared it with other tourism guilds. We are also coordinating with the Tourism Assistant Manager at the Municipality of Arequipa and the Regional Tourism Manager, and both authorities have agreed to promote a colorful and successful campaign.

We are also going to talk to the minister of Tourism. We, therefore, expect to conduct this campaign successfully so that the public will know that people from Arequipa are loving, nice, and want to welcome tourists. And, of course, PERUMIN is a special event for which we all improve our businesses. We buy the best supplies to serve the mining public.

There might be people who want destroy things, but we want to build things. Today Arequipa is not receiving tourists, but we are going to prepare it, make it more beautiful, plant some flowers, and clean the streets to receive our tourists the way they deserve. We will be well prepared.

Is there another challenge facing the sector vis-à-vis PERUMIN 36?

By September, we hope to have the whole social conflict issue resolved, or that at least things will have settled down. We all have the right to think differently, but demonstrations must be peaceful.

We hope to have a peaceful, friendly Arequipa, comfortable and joyful for visitors, not only for the benefit of the hotel and restaurant sector, but of all citizens.

Conventioneers spend much more than a normal tourist. What incentives do you plan to offer in order to take advantage of the arrival of these tourists in September?

As an association, we have analyzed our rates, and how to make them more attractive to such important public. We also want for Arequipa to become a place for different events, so we are preparing to offer the best services.

For several years now, Arequipa has had the objective of becoming the Peruvian Capital of Conventions. How is that going?

We are working with different tourism guilds, especially the Bureau of Conventions of Arequipa, so that our city can host different events throughout the year, not just PERUMIN, which takes place every two years. This year is the exception: PERUMIN will be held for the second year in a row.

What we want is for Arequipa to be seen as a place where one can hold good conventions, since we have the right infrastructure for both large conventions for over a thousand people and smaller conventions. We have the hotel infrastructure, a variety of places to stay and with very good service, and restaurants with our typical food; so, Arequipa has all the conditions to attract different market niches.