With its shimmering high-rise buildings and coastal location, Panama City in some ways resembles Miami. But it’s more often called the Dubai of Latin America, thanks to its attention-grabbing architecture and economic strength. Couple this big-city sophistication and growing business scene with the natural beauty just outside the city limits—not to mention the now-expanding Panama Canal—and it’s clear why more meeting planners are turning to this Central American hot spot.
The growth is indeed impressive. In the near future, Panama City will welcome a new convention center, a world-class cultural facility, a widened canal and a greatly expanded international airport. In addition, the capital city is in the midst of an unprecedented growth spurt in hotel development. Nearly every major international hotel company either has a hotel open in Panama City or has one—or more—in the works.
“The main factor driving hotel investment in Panama for the Bern group, as for any other investor, is the continuous growth in the demand for business and leisure travelers in Panama,” says Herman Bern Jr., vice president of product and development at Bern Hotels & Resorts, which owns several internationally branded hotels in Panama, including the recently opened 611-room Westin Playa Bonita, which has 65,000 square feet of meeting space, and the Westin Panama City, which is scheduled to open by the end of this year. “Panama has become the hub for the Latin American region, driving more and more business travelers as well as regional meetings, while at the same time becoming a very exotic and interesting destination for the North American market, which is great for the incentive market, and we have seen a huge increase in demand.”
According to Bern, more U.S.-based planners than ever are turning to Panama.
“The American market is our No. 1 client,” he says. “Panama has a great appeal to the American traveler, as it’s close to home, it uses the American dollar, and it’s very American-friendly, while still providing an exotic-destination appeal. The meetings market finds it very convenient for regional meetings attracting different attendees from all over the Americas, as it’s central for everyone with direct flights to all the major cities in the Americas.”
Panama’s allure for meetings is closely related to its appeal as a growing business destination, according to Ernesto Orillac, vice minister of tourism and sub-administrator general at the Autoridad de Turismo Panama (ATP), the nation’s tourism office.
“First of all, Panama is a nation with a very solid economy, which is based on the dollar. We are a very strong financial hub,” he says. “We’ve had great growth in recent years. Panama has positioned itself quickly as a destination for tourism, and the connectivity and infrastructure has improved a lot. There is no other city that is so well-connected with Central America, South America and North America.”
According to Orillac, 2012 and 2013 are shaping up to be the biggest years for hotel growth. He says meetings and conventions account for nearly 20 percent of international visitor revenue, up from just 10 percent at the beginning of this century.
Hoteliers have taken note of the power of the meetings market.
“We take the demands of [the meetings] market very much into consideration when designing a property, as well as selecting the property location,” Bern says. “We have also found that for the meetings, conventions and incentives market, a resort destination has more appeal than a city hotel, but distance from the airport is key, as they don’t want to spend too much time in transfer times.”
For this reason, he explains, his company’s biggest sellers for international meetings are the resort-style properties, including the InterContinental Playa Bonita and Gamboa Rainforest Resort.
Selling the idea of a meeting in Panama has become increasingly easy, according to many observers. Victor Mojica, general manager of the Radisson Decapolis Hotel Panama City, ticks off a list of impressive awards that Panama has garnered in recent years.
“In 2009, Forbes named Panama as one of the 10 best retirement havens in the world,” he notes. “In 2010, Panama’s Tourism Authority said the hotel sector was one of the fastest growing employers in Panama, and the number of hotels expected to open in the following three years meant a huge demand for workers. In 2012, The New York Times named Panama as the first of 45 Places to Go in 2012. For our country to be named first of 45 places to go in 2012 in such a distinguished daily newspaper as The New York Times shows how the evolution of Panama City’s hotel market has grown through the years.”
The recent growth in Panama has been tremendous, according to Felix Madera, executive vice president international at Sonesta International Hotels Corporation, which will open the 304-room Royal Sonesta Hotel and Casino Panama this year.
“There has been a lot of interest from international markets, especially from the U.S.,” Madera says. “There is now a large American population that calls Panama home. The number of business and leisure travelers continues to grow, generating more demand for hotels.”
Businesses like Procter & Gamble, Caterpillar and Dell have stepped up their presence in Panama in recent years, according to Mark Stevenson, vice president and managing director of the Trump Ocean Club International Hotel & Tower, which opened last year as the first Trump-branded property in Central or South America. With more than 46,000 square feet of meeting space, the Trump Ocean Club is geared to cater to the needs of international corporate types looking to meet.
“Procter & Gamble moved 1,000 families here [recently] and another 500 last year, so you’ve got a huge influx of expats,” Stevenson notes. Add up all these factors and it’s easy to see why Panama City is a growing destination for meetings, conventions and incentives. When Panama hosts the 18th edition of the Americas Meetings and Incentive Travel Market (MITM) Dec. 5-7, there will certainly be lots to talk about. A brand-new, as-yet-unnamed convention center is set to be built within the next two to three years on the Amador Causeway (as a complement to the existing Atlapa Convention Center, which has a 34,500-square-foot hall and a 2,806-seat auditorium), and the eye-catching Museo de la Biodiversidad, a museum of biodiversity designed by star architect Frank Gehry, is due to fully open by 2014.
“The country is focused on growing the meetings and conventions market and has implemented a series of incentives,” according to Annette Cardenas, director of marketing at the Panama Marriott hotel, noting that the Autoridad de Turismo de Panama has offered incentives including free use of the convention center, free welcome receptions and dinners, and free transportation to Panama for speakers.
“Because of an agreement Panama signed with the United States, the country is now able to offer tax-deductible conventions to U.S. companies holding their meetings in Panama. This new incentive is expected to be an important element in growing this segment.”
Still, because Panama is a fast-growing destination, planners might find that not all attendees are up-to-date on what it offers, says Olga M. Ramudo, president and CEO of Express Travel in Miami, which has handled several governmental delegations and trade missions to Panama.
“[In one case,] my customer did have misconceptions about the destination,” she says. “It was not an easy sell. Nevertheless, they were very pleasantly surprised by the facilities, support and how much the destination has progressed.”
Well Connected
According to Adolfo Sen, commercial director at Panama City-based Copa Airlines, a big part of Panama’s appeal for planners is location, location, location.
“Panama is at the crossroads of the Americas and its ideal geographic position has led to the country becoming a major center of business and trade in America,” Sen says. “Panama is projected to be one of the fastest-growing countries in Latin America and is a sought-after site for headquarters of multinational companies.”
Panama City’s Tocumen International Airport is marketed as the “Hub of the Americas” by Copa Airlines, which uses the facility as its home base. The carrier recently added a sixth bank of connecting flights and in June is launching new nonstop service to Las Vegas. A new South Terminal is slated to open at Tocumen in 2014, with plans to increase the central terminal building and establish a light rail link to the city.
Copa Airlines offers a service called Copa Conventions to help planners with groups of 20 or more attendees, whether the event is taking place in Panama or in another of the airline’s destinations.
“Event or convention participants receive special discounts and benefits when they fly with us,” Sen says. “Using the Copa Conventions service is very easy; meeting planners just contact one of our sales offices and provide background on their event. They can even upload the event on our website, or if preferred, book it through their travel agent.”
Hospitable Hosts
An array of international brands are making their entry into Panama City within a period of just a few months—including Aloft, Hard Rock, Hilton, NH, Sonesta, Waldorf Astoria and Westin.
The expanded inventory is good news for planners, according to Stevenson, noting that before the boom in hotel growth, a lot of hotels didn’t even have any meeting space.
“The hotels were not that competitive with each other,” he says. “They were all running very high occupancies, so there was no reason to push hard in the service culture. Now there are a lot of changes taking place. Thirteen thousand new hotel rooms are coming into the market over the next year and a half.”
In addition to more choices, Stevenson says planners can take advantage of average room rates that have dipped about eight percent in the last year.
“Most of the hotels currently under development in Panama are building significant meeting space into their plans,” says Madera, whose new Sonesta hotel has nearly 12,000 square feet of meeting space. “There is a great deal of demand that is not currently being met, and considering the continued local and regional meeting needs, the addition of international corporations will only increase this demand for great facilities.”
The largest hotel is yet to come: The 1,499-room Hard Rock Hotel Panama Megapolis, the first Hard Rock property in Latin America outside of Mexico, is set to open this year with 24,250 square feet of meeting space.
Freelance journalist Mark Chesnut has been covering Latin America for more than 15 years. He is the business travel blogger for Orbitz Worldwide and edits his own blog, LatinFlyer.com, about travel to Latin America.
