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 Panama will always be with you. Mexico way beyond imagination. Colombia: the problem is you might want to stay. These are some of the slogans that the 32 countries in the Americas, the Caribbean, Europe and also Africa, including Egypt, Cameroon and Tunisia among its representatives, have launched in order to attract the attention of professionals during the 36th Brazilian Congress of Travel Agencies.
Many countries have invested in experimentation so as to showcase some more of the local culture. One of the representatives of the United States, the city of Las Vegas, for example, has bet on the exuberance by inviting participants to choose among dozens of wigs, eyeglasses and lots of feathers, including photographs taken in a studio.
Argentina has put together various stands featuring different attractions that the country has to offer, and some companies invested in their own spaces, as was the case with Tango Palace, which showcased the art of dancing with professional dancers. The new concert hall in Buenos Aires, inaugurated in April this year, participated for the first time in the Congress of the Brazilian Travel Agency Association (Abav) eyeing the Brazilian market.
"Brazil is our number one market. Approximately 30% of our customers are from here. What we offer is a differentiated product: for US$ 85, the tourist can walk across a space of 100 square meters including life-size mock-ups of the city's main tourist points; purchase typical products, go to a bar where pizza and beer are served freely; a 360° cinema in which images of the capital are screened, free dinner, and a show featuring 12 dancers who illustrate the evolution of Tango. It is a differentiated product," says the head of sales, Leandro Cano.
The Brazilian market is also the target of the Dominican Republic, for which tourism is the main source of income. "We have been attending the Congress for three editions now. At first, we would only receive 4,000 Brazilians; as of 2007, the figure reached 12,000.
In addition to the Caribbean and Atlantic Ocean beaches, we have highly wealthy monuments such as the house of Diego Colombo, the firstborn son to Christopher Columbus, who discovered America, as well as the continent's first cathedral, university and hospital, and we are also considered as the global golf capital. The Brazilians will surely love it," says the advisor for Tourism Promotion, Nodalia Arias.
The congress of Abav was held until October 24 at Riocentro and for the first time it occupied five pavilions in the Convention Center, with an exhibition area of 51,000 square meters (549,000 square feet), as against 27,280 square meters (294,000 square feet) in the last edition.
Sebrae
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Brazil received a huge boost in its international image with its selection as the host of the 2016 Olympics, but it was really just the cherry on top of the overall recognition of the country's ascension to the ranks of one of the world's most important countries. Now, as it finally takes its place on the world scene, there has been a great deal of concern about what kind of image Brazil hopes to project, now that the world is really paying attention. 
The only good thing to say about the visit to Brazil of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on Monday November 23, is that it was mercifully short and lasted less than 24 hours. Ahmadinejad had his picture taken being hugged by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who gave him a warm welcome and said Iran had every right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. 
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose.
"Dont come here....too dirty and dangerous" ?
Fact are
- that Brazilians will travel less to foreign countries such as Argentina, Europe and the USA, because the Brazilian currency went SHARPLY DOWN against these currencies !!!!! And this is on top of the economic slowdown in....Brazil !
- that people in developed nations will also go less outside their country, but still more than Brazilians because the US$ strenghtened against nearly all world currencies, the EU strenghtened against ALL emerging nations countries. And this despite the economic slowdown more pronounced in the developed nations.
Will developed nations tourists go to Brazil as a prime destination ? Of course not.
There are so many other emerging nations with currencies as weak as yours but......SO MUCH MORE ENJOYABLE, such as the Dominican Republic and other Carïbean countries, Egypt, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Morocco, Tunisia, Argentina, and now even the Gulf states with their 7 stars hotels for the price of 4 stars hotels elsewhere.
the Gulf states are going to LOSE tens billions and billions of US$ in their MEGALO infrastructure developments !
It already started. DUBAI is not that far away from...BANKRUPTCY ! Next year and thereafter, we will get 7 stars hotel prices for the equivalent of 3 stars hotels elsewhere. Not believing what I say is fine, but it already happened in the 1980's !
Luxurious and large hotel suites were....dirty cheap ! But that was not even enough to fill the rooms. They still remained 50-70 % empty ! Simply because there is no fun there ! Deserts will remain deserts and religion is always omni present !!!!!! But outside of this, it is very clean, mechanical beach cleaners stay busy the whole season, and the cities are cleaned by an army of foreign workers from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Philippines and India all using mechanical cleaner vehicles !!!!
But the hotel prices charged will not cover their infrastructure investments charges !!!!!!!
Abu Dhabi or Dubai (I dont recall) are such megalos that they develop their airport to receive 120 millions passengers...yearly.
No doubt they will cut the size, but even the final size will be 5 times TOO BIG !!!!!!!
Arabs are nuts ! They just throw money out of the window ! Great idea for..... U.S., European and Japanese engineers, architects, designers and what all these arabs oil countries import ! Truckloads of profits have been made there !!!!!!
The new tourists gimmick there will be to take 360 degrees cities pictures from the top of a....CRANE...with unobstructed view ! Free of charge...of course !!!!!