Peru’s Foreign Trade and Tourism Minister, Martin Pérez, said this week the government is planning to design new access routes into Machu Picchu in order to increase tourism without harming the sacred Inca citadel.
“It is important to design two or three new routes for entering and leaving Machu Picchu,” state news agency Andina reported Pérez as saying. “The intention is to have sustainable tourism management in [Machu Picchu].”
“The entrance and exit from the citadel do not necessarily need to be from the same place in order to better care for the emblematic monument.”
In addition, Pérez said he believes that Machu Picchu could receive 2,500 tourists per day without creating problems for the archaeological site, adding that there is still sufficient room to grow the number of tourists that visit Machu Picchu every year.
Machu Picchu is Peru’s top tourist attraction attracting between. In 2008, the site attracted more than 850,000 tourists.
Meanwhile, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee has recently recommended that Peru’s government take measures to control the number of tourists that visit Machu Picchu.
Carlos Canales, president of Peru’s National Chamber of Tourism (Canatur), is calling into question the technical basis that the INC and UNESCO used for setting the limit at 2,500 visitors per day and advocates doubling the figure.
The INC’s study “was not prepared by specialists,” Canales contended in Monday’s edition of Peru’s main business daily Gestión. “Nor have international methodologies been used to measure the environmental impact and the burden caused by the number of visitors.”
“You can distribute the number of tourist routes into the sanctuary and you could easily double the amount estimated by the INC and reach up to 5,000 visitors a day,” Canales said in a statement on Canatur’s Web site.
“Nobody wants to overburden our patrimony. No one wants to saturate the destination,” he added. ” But nor can we restrict the normal, sustainable and orderly growth that Cusco and Machu Picchu should have.”
In 1980, Machu Picchu received 145,566 visitors. By 2000, that figure surpassed 420,000, and by 2008 it had doubled, reaching an all-time high of 858,211, according to INC figures. Last year, there was a slight decrease in the number of visitors — 815,268, representing a 6 percent dip — due to the world economic crisis.
Juan Julio Garcia, regional director of the INC, told Andina news agency that the current carrying capacity limit is not only contained in the Master Plan for Machu Picchu but is also based on technical studies carried out between 2002 and 2005 to support its implementation.
The UNESCO-sponsored Master Plan for Machu Picchu called for no more than 917 visitors per day – and no more than 385 visitors at any one time – while the INC has recommended a maximum carrying capacity of 2,000 visitors. Peru’s central government advocated in 2002 for 3,400, and the parties settled in 2008 on a daily limit of 2,500 visitors.
“One possibility would involve amendments to redo the study,” Garcia said. “To date, there has arisen no technical proposal of this nature and from our end we’re not planning to make that assessment.”
“We are now in full implementation of the Master Plan. There are a number of points included in that and it would be hasty to speak now of a higher capacity versions of visitors,” Garcia concluded.
While understanding that a second transportation method to Machu Picchu is desirable, the greater influx of people will inevitably attract more people who believe it to be accepatble to deface monuments with grafitti. I saw the first evidence of this at the Temple of the Moon in 2009. Thankfully I saw nothing on my visit this year, but it did serve as an indication of what can happen when numbers are increased. This years floods highlighted the importance of a second link, but to exploit this as a means of generating extra revenue would be a mistake.