Carnival days are some of the anticipated festivities in Panama, and this 12 months’s occasion set a typical to advertise them as a vacationer attraction world wide. In accordance with the Panama Tourism Authority (ATP), the 2024 Panama Metropolis Carnival organizers achieved an financial return of over US$18 million in the course of the 4 days of festivities.
“In abstract, the 2024 Panama Metropolis carnivals had been a powerful success that promoted tradition and tourism, boosted the native financial system, and strengthened Panama’s picture as a world-class vacationer vacation spot,” stated Denise Guillén, ATP administrator.
The organizers consider these outcomes show they’ve exceeded expectations and laid the foundations to proceed elevating the capital’s Carnival as a first-class product to draw vacationers.
“It is vitally passable and spectacular to say that we generated greater than US$18 million in return on funding, contemplating our preliminary funding quantity of US$1.6 million. This determine doesn’t even embrace the earnings of micro and small entrepreneurs with their meals stalls,” stated Nadkyi Duque, the Panama Metropolis Carnival 2024 organizing board president.
The information exhibits that over 140,000 folks, together with each nationals and foreigners from varied components of the world, reminiscent of america, Colombia, Venezuela, France, England, Germany, and Hong Kong, got here to Panama Metropolis to benefit from the carnival actions organized within the Previous City and on the coastal strip.
Throughout Carnival 2024, Panama obtained 98,850 worldwide guests. Greater than 72,000 arrived through Tocumen Worldwide Airport, roughly 19,000 by way of cruise ships, and over 7,000 by land, based on ATP information.
Panama celebrates its Carnival for 4 steady days earlier than Ash Wednesday. In the course of the festivities, they choose the Carnival Queen, which turned an official custom in 1910. Within the evenings, there are parades with queens carrying carnival costumes aboard allegorical floats, troupes, and tunas. These actions happen on squares and avenues.
The sardine burial is a big act that signifies the tip of the carnival festivities and the start of the season of Lent. Every area in Panama celebrates this occasion otherwise. Within the capital metropolis, the general public and the carnival queens come out “crying and screaming” (in a farce tone). On the identical time, an enormous sardine can go forward (sardine is a typical dish in Panamanian delicacies), and actually, they “bury the sardine.”
