Guatemalan tourism authorities prepared a plan to care for Salvadorans who will visit the neighboring country during the holidays.
The Guatemalan Institute of Tourism (Inguat) expects more than 70,000 Salvadorans to make tourism in the neighboring country during the agostinas holidays, held from 1 to 6 August.
Unlike Easter or New Year’s Eve, August holidays are internal for the patron saint’s feasts in honor of the Divine Savior of the World, a celebration strictly for San Salvador but which runs to the rest of the territory.
Public employees are on vacation between 1 and 6 August, while private workers in San Salvador have a break on August 3 and 5. August 6th is a national break.
To attend to Salvadoran tourists, Inguat launched a plan at the El Salvador Embassy in Guatemala that provides for the delivery of information and tourist assistance, as well as accompaniment with relief and security forces.
According to the Inguat, the period of agostinas of vacation is when the most Salvadorans arrive in Guatemala, who enter mainly through the land border posts.
To ensure that the visit of the Salvadoran brothers is the most enjoyable and safe, we work with the Ministry of the Interior and the Guatemalan Institute of Migration on the adaptation of border crossings, said Harris Whitbeck, director general of the Inguat.
The institution reports that 65,116 Salvadoran tourists were registered on the August 2023 holidays, generating $19.5 million in income to the economy.
At the end of 2023, the Salvadorans were placed as themain tourists in Guatemala, with more than 1.1 million visitors, equivalent to 45 per cent of the more than 2.6 million who arrived in the whole year.
This article has been translated after first appearing in Diario El Mundo