Ecuador’s war on brutal drug gangs hits its tourism industry

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A global Catholic conference that only happens once every four years went ahead this month in Quito, but under the shadow of an internal war on drug traffickers attendance was 25% lower than planned.

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“Out of 16,000 people originally expected, 4,000 decided to skip it for security reasons — including the Pope,” said Diego Vivero, president of Ecuador’s restaurant association. “The damage is huge.”

It’s the latest crisis to hit an industry that, according to the World Bank, is one of the struggling South American nation’s top three top potential moneymakers, along with agriculture and mining.

Ecuador offers more than enough to make it an international travel magnet, from Andean glaciers to tropical beaches and rainforests to the fabled Galapagos Islands. It also uses the dollar, eliminating the exchange-rate risk to travelers from the US, its main market.

Yet crises have undermined its ability to attract foreign visitors time and again. From a deadly earthquake nearly a decade ago to a brazen, televised hostage-taking this year that prompted President Daniel Noboa to crack down, Ecuador’s tour operators can’t catch a break.

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The crime situation made global news in August 2023 when a presidential candidate was gunned down just two weeks before the vote. The homicide rate soared to 46.5 people per 100,000 in 2024, an eightfold surge from 2018.

Then on Jan. 9, a group of armed thugs took over a TV set in Guayaquil, menacing staff at gunpoint during a live broadcast. Noboa, who had taken office six weeks earlier, declared a nationwide state of emergency and labeled almost two dozen narco gangs as terrorist organizations.

“Overnight, after what happened at TC Television, we said we’re going to attack, give ‘em lead, without thinking of the repercussions on foreign travel,” said Fausto Rodriguez, a Galapagos-based travel entrepreneur. Overseas customers, he added, “don’t want to get caught in the crossfire.”

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The fear has led to sharply fewer visitors, according to people in the travel industry.

Occupation at the Mantaraya Lodge near the beach town of Puerto Lopez “has been awful this year,” said Raul Garcia, head of the tourism chamber in Pichincha province who owns the lodge as well as two ships that ply rivers in the Amazon.

“Without our good 2023, we would be in really bad shape,” said Franziska Mueller, head of Quito-based adventure travel agency Latitud 0.

Visitors are even avoiding the traditionally safe Galapagos Islands because they’re afraid of the obligatory stopovers in mainland Ecuador, Rodriguez said. Some cruise lines have also shifted their itineraries to avoid arrivals via Guayaquil.

Noboa’s team is standing by its strategy. The declaration of internal war “was a brave decision by the government and a necessary decision,” Tourism Minister Mateo Estrella said Monday in a telephone interview, conceding it did have a negative impact on Ecuador’s appeal as a tourist destination. “That image has to be rebuilt bit by bit with time, with effort.”

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There are also signs the crisis may have hit bottom. Bookings plunged by 22% in January but gradually recovered, with Estrella currently projecting about a 10% hit overall. “Tourists haven’t stopped coming to the country,” he said.

Tour operators in other Latin American destinations like Colombia and Mexico have learned over years how to deal with security issues, while in Ecuador it’s a new situation that “obviously awakens more mixed feelings.” The government will increase its budget for international travel marketing, the minister added.

Concerns about violence are only the latest in a string of challenges the travel industry has faced.

In 2016, a major earthquake killed hundreds and inflicted billions of dollars in damage on Ecuador’s beach towns. Indigenous protests that ruined travel plans and undermined the nation’s image bookended the Covid-19 pandemic. And then in 2022, worsening security led the Ecuadorian soccer federation to decline hosting the Copa America — one of the sport’s top international competitions — so it wound up being held in the US this year.

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‘Certain Provinces’

Despite its potential, tourism in Ecuador accounts for just 2.9% of gross domestic product, with annual receipts of $1.1 billion as arrivals remain below pre-pandemic levels, according to the World Bank. There are, however, signs the worst is over.

Homicides have dropped 17% on the year as of Sept. 1, according to the interior ministry. And violence has shifted to “certain provinces to where the criminals have retreated, and this has required a priority attention,” General César Zapata, head of the national police, said last month. Many of these areas, particularly the agricultural heartland and urban slums of the Pacific Coast lowlands, are hardly focal points of travel, leaving most tourist destinations much safer.

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For all the violence, the State Department ranks Ecuador as “Level Two” — the same as Brazil and safer than “Level-Three” Colombia, where tourism is booming despite a US recommendation to “reconsider travel.”

Ecuador’s government and private sector need to improve messaging to get that point across internationally, as well as work together like the Peruvian travel industry did when it was rocked by violence in 2023, according to Garcia.

Adventure tourism hub Baños and UNESCO World Heritage city Cuenca remain buzzy with new scenic glass walkways, hotels and restaurants. The latter is slated to host the Ibero-American Summit in November, while Quito will welcome techno music fans as part of the international Road to Ultra rave series that same month.

Contingency plans for the event are being drawn up with police, military and local officials “so we’re ready for anything that might happen,” said Sebastian Egas, general manager of organizer FTC Live.

Elsewhere in the capital, tourism is carrying on. “Guests have been surprised that it’s possible to walk in the streets and sit down at a restaurant,” Mueller said. “They had read that there’s constant shooting.”

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