Ana M. López
Research expert covering travel, tourism and hospitality
Tourism in Patagonia, Antarctica & the Falklands - statistics & facts
Patagonia, Antarctica, and the Falkland Islands lie in the southernmost part of the earth and are, therefore, some of the most unique travel destinations in the world.
Overnight tourism in Argentina's Patagonia was close to 6.8 million nights in 2021. On the Chilean side, the number amounted to 370 thousand nights in the two previously mentioned core regions that year. These figures still reflected the effects of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, so they are most likely to go up in the following years.
Adventure and nature in South America
The Patagonian region stretches in the Southern territories of Chile and Argentina. It includes several type of landscapes, such as glaciers, steppes, lakes, and the Andean Mountain Range. The region does not have an exact delimitation, so its borders change slightly depending on the source defining it. In Argentina, the provinces of Tierra del Fuego, Santa Cruz, Chubut, Río Negro, Neuquén, and La Pampa are officially part of Patagonia. In Chile, the regions of Aysén and Magallanes are always included, but an officially established Northern border to it has not been set. In some cases, Los Lagos and Los Ríos are also considered to be located within Patagonia.Overnight tourism in Argentina's Patagonia was close to 6.8 million nights in 2021. On the Chilean side, the number amounted to 370 thousand nights in the two previously mentioned core regions that year. These figures still reflected the effects of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, so they are most likely to go up in the following years.
Tourism in the coldest place on Earth
Antarctica is the bleakest and least populated continent on the planet, with only around one to five thousand residents for scientific research purposes. But for tourism, the number of people setting foot on the continent goes up to five-digit numbers. However, the pandemic still caused the number of passengers making landings – excluding cruise-only passengers – to drop by more than half in the 2021/2022 travel season. Due to the extreme climate, trips to Antarctica only take place during summer.A British destination in the South Atlantic Ocean
The Falkland Islands are closest to Argentina but have been a UK overseas territory since the 19th century. For this reason, the archipelago – known as Islas Malvinas in Spanish – has been in dispute and even led to a war between these two countries. Like in Antarctica, the Falkland population is small, so that the annual number of visitors to these islands usually surpasses the number of inhabitants. Apart from transit, business travel is a most popular type of tourism in the Falklands. In fact, this was the main reason to travel to this destination in 2020 and 2021 and was even only around 2.4 percent below the number of leisure tourists to this territory in 2019, which differed from the global trend.
