Las Nuevas Galápagos: The New Galapagos: Tourism and Development for Northern Peru Turismo y Desarrollo para el Norte del Perú

Resumen

In the Piura-Lambayeque Region, in Northern Peru, there are two groups of islands near the Pacific Coast. One is Lobos-de-Tierra and the other one is Lobos-de-Afuera, because it is located further away into the ocean. This paper proposes construing an artificial floating island between the two groups of islands mentioned above. This would create a larger cluster of islands that will serve only as a sanctuary for the sea lions and other marine species that live in the area, such as penguins and other births. This cluster of islands could become the Peruvian Galapagos.
The costs of the investment project are calculated by using the data from similar endeavors in China or Denmark or The Maldives. We may assume that the unit costs for the Artificial Floating Island in Peru are equal to the unit costs of another similar project of artificial floating islands in those countries. The benefits of this investment project will be the new income generated by the new cruise tourism. We may assume that the benefits of the project may be estimated from the actual tourism revenue from the Galapagos Islands.
The paper advances that the benefit-cost ratio will be positive and the internal rate of return will be higher than other tourism projects already approved by development banks, such as the Inter-American Development Bank.

The new project will also help relief from the situation Peru is facing with the global COVID-19 pandemic. Economic recession is plaguing Peru in the 2020s and amounts as one of the worst economic situations of the last 100 years. Also, the global economy is in contraction in Europe and other regions. In fact, the aftermath of the pandemic will be considered as years of economic development lost for some countries like Peru. Specifically, receptive tourism in Peru is in danger of extinction after the pandemic. Actually, Peruvian tourism, which gives employment to 1.4 million people who are mainly women, is in collapse. Also, this article aims to make proposals to help tourism sales recover their position as the most important section of service exports in Peru. The proposal is intended to encourage a
nontraditional tourism on the tropical coast of Northern Peru that should complement the traditional archeological tourism. The conclusions make emphasis on the fact that, at present, Peru is not exploiting its comparative advantage in tourism, which could become a leading sector of the economy. Finally, our thesis is based on the notion that, from 2021 onwards, the recovery of the Peruvian economy must necessarily be based on exploiting the recovery of external demand rather than putting our trust in domestic demand growth.