Navigation maps to boost tourism in Colombia

Officials expect to attract 10% of the 2 million sailboats traveling the Caribbean Sea.

CARTAGENA, Colombia - Cartagena is the country's first city to offer tourists a map with navigation routes of its coasts.

The map is part of a project created by the National Nautical Guide, in which the country's authorities have invested more than US$1.7 million in providing visitors with a "user friendly" sea entrance guide for about 30 coastal municipalities.

Captain Esteban Uribe, director of the Oceanography and Hydrographic Research Center (CIOH), said the information will be available in digital and print formats.

"[The map] will contain all the data about potential tourist sites and ports," Uribe said. "It will highlight aerial photos, nautical charts to safely navigate shallow waters, access channels, authorized anchor locations, marine locations, historical, cultural and tourist information, in addition to documents and other arrival requirements."

Captain Víctor Hurtado, commander of the Port of Cartagena, said the number of sailboats visiting Cartagena has increased in the past three years.

"During 2008, 989 recreational boats arrived to the city, a 23.31% increase from 2007," he said.

The nautical guide is aimed at attracting 10% of the two million sailboats and yachts that travel the Caribbean Sea to the Colombian coasts, Hurtado said.

Tourism in Colombia up 10.4 % since 2008

Cartagena's government, with the support of the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism, is considering building an international marina with the capacity to dock 400 sailboats and yachts.

Cartagena has about 10 marinas along 21 kilometers (13 miles) of beaches in Bocagrande, Marbella, Boquilla and Manzanillo del Mar.

"Definitely, we think it is positive the construction of the [international] marina because nautical tourism is a different type of tourism," Dorey Cárcamo, director of the Hotels Association of the Caribbean, told the Cartagena daily El Universal. "Although they use their yachts and sailboats for lodging, they also generate a lot of income [for the city]."

The National Nautical Guide is a project of the Cartagena de Indias Tourism Corporation, the CIOH and the National Maritime Directorate (Dimar). The Tourist Promotion Fund financed 62% of the US$1.7 million project.

The navigational maps for other municipalities on the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean are expected to be finished in two years, officials said. The departments that should benefit the most from the initiative are Bolívar, Magdalena, Chocó, San Andrés and Providencia, Atlántico, Sucre, Córdoba, La Guajira, Valle del Cauca and Nariño, according to the CIOH.

The navy is providing three ships for the project, with the CIOH contributing more than 70 workers who will travel to all the municipalities to collect data for the maps.

The number of tourists who arrived in Colombia in 2009 increased 10.4% since 2008. In the first semester of 2010, Colombia had 678,177 visitors, according to official data.

Bogotá welcomed the most tourists (349,348), followed by Cartagena (81,460), Medellín (72,403), Cali (49,066) and San Andrés (25,462).

The first map, with information about Cartagena, will be free and will bolster the region's tourism industry, said Luis Ernesto Araújo, president of the Tourism Corporation.

"It will place the Caribbean coast among the best navigation routes in the world of tourism," he said.

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