Panama hotels with 32,000 available rooms achieved only seven percent occupancy between January and July of 2021 when the optimum level should be 60%.

The pandemic ended up sinking a sector that was already showing signs of exhaustion largely due to overbuilding. Only 38% of hotels have reopened.

Armando Rodríguez, president of the Panama Hotel Association (Apatel) says, the occupation result revealed today is the product of mobility restrictions, such as curfew, checkpoints, and quarantine imposed by the Ministry of Health, as part of the strategy to combat the coronavirus.

Another factor that has affected the low hotel occupancy is the bad publicity that the country has gained in recent months due to complaints from passengers trying to enter the country, Rodríguez said.

Via social networks, travelers complain about the hours they wait in line to get the PCR test when they had already done it in their country of origin.

"The mandatory three-day quarantine is maintained for travelers from South America, who now represent 60% of visitors arriving in the country," he added.