Peru promotes tourism during ASPA summit

Peru on Sunday launched a tourism campaign before the formal opening of the third South American-Arab Countries (ASPA) Summit. The ASPA summit will be held Monday and Sunday. About 2,000 people, including heads of state and government, high ranking officials and businessmen will attend the summit. During meetings between high ranking officials a day before the official opening of the summit, Peruvian Ministry of External Commerce and Tourism spread videos and photographs and distributed brochures among the visiting delegations and journalists. It is estimated that more than 200,000 residents of capital city Lima will carry out domestic trips as the government has declared October 1 and 2 as "holidays", which is expected to generate revenue of more than 200 million U.S. dollars, according to Peru' s National Chamber of Tourism. In 2011, 2.7 million people visited Peru, resulted in revenue of 2.912 billion dollars, a 17 percent rise compared with the previous year. One of Peruvian main tourism attractions is the Machu Picchu archeological site which belongs to the World Cultural Heritage' s category. The site is one of the Modern World' s Seven Wonders and hosts about 1 million tourists every year.