Travel to Chile Up Over Last Year

Chile paid a visit to Toronto last night.

Representatives of 14 tourism businesses shared story ideas and travel inspiration with 60 travel, food and wine writers, bloggers, editors and influencers over Chilean wine and samples of typical dishes.

The event at Archeo Restaurant in the Distillery District helped showcase what’s new for visitors to the longest and thinnest country in the world.

There was also a guided tasting of six Chilean wines and an olive oil sampling, led by wine expert Nora Favelukes.

The Toronto stop followed a similar event in New York this week, a U.S.-Canada roadshow sponsored by Chile's tourist board, Sernatur.

The events were aimed at drawing more tourists to the diverse South American country, which includes desert, mountains, wine regions and the Pacific Ocean coastline. Antarctica and Chilean territory Easter Island are also part of the country’s tourism portfolio.

Tim Post of Antarctica XXI, which specializes in fly-cruise packages that gets travellers to Antarctica quickly, said the southern continent and the territory of Patagonia, which Chile shares with Argentina, are the “new Iceland” for travellers anxious to experience new parts of the world. “It’s becoming so hot,” he said. “There’s no place on Earth like Antarctica.”

The wine regions of Chile draw younger travellers keen to explore wineries, but who want something less traditional than France or Italy, said Favelukes.

“We now have the millennials and they are they are much more sophisticated and adventurous,” she said. “They are looking for what’s next, what’s new. And Chile fits the bill. Chile is new and exciting.”

Chile recently topped Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel for 2018 list as top pick for where to go this year, said Ferrari.

“The Canadian market is a very good one for us,” Claudia Ferrari, marketing manager for Sernatur, said. Some 55,000 Canadians visited Chile last year, up about 3% from 2017.

Amalia Meliti, of New York marketer DCI, said Chile is expecting to see a spike in tourism the July, 2019 solar eclipse. She said stargazing is excellent in parts of the country, and travelling to experience dramatic night skies is emerging as a new tourism market.

Freelance writer and photographer Joe Yogerst showed the travel writers the wide variety of stories they can find in Chile, using photos from his assignments across the country.

Air Canada flies non-stop to Santiago from Toronto, which has also helped encourage Canadian visits, Ferrari said.

“Chile has everything for every kind of tourist: adventure, the luxury of experience, food, wine and culture,” said Ferrari, adding the hospitable people are the country’s greatest tourism asset.