Tourist numbers may not have increased by much this year, but this must be because Mar del Plata is always full over the holiday season. What has risen, along with the sun this summer, is the money being spent by the visitors. Argentina’s premier holiday spot is buzzing, and so are casino takings.

The other side of the River Plate, in Uruguay’s Punta del Este, the opinion seems to be that tourist numbers are down from last year. In an atypical holiday season, there have been higher spending visitors from the US, Brazil and Europe but fewer Uruguayans and Argentineans than usual. Air taxi and private jet flights arriving in Punta del Este in January have risen 18% this year.

According to a report in Clarín, the month of January has seen over 1,400,000 tourists arrive in Mar del Plata and at the weekend, the last in January, it received 400,000 visitors, the highest number for five years. The tourists have been spending time trying their luck at the Casino Central, buying casino chips at the rate of one million pesos (US$326,664) a day over the weekends. A new record has been set for the number of players at the casino over one weekend – 26,000, a rise of nearly 20% over 2005 figures. (E-01.31.06)

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