This year Embratur, the agency responsible for promoting Brazil's tourism abroad, will set up 13 Brazilian Tourism Offices (EBTs) in four continents. These offices will function as real embassies for Brazil's tourist attractions, gathering information which will be available to operators, travel agents and also the end consumers. That way, we will be able to have a stronger influence on tourists at the time of planning their trip. The offices will also support our agencies' marketing and PR actions abroad providing more accurate information about market trends.
The offices will be in Europe, North America, South America and Asia. The European offices will be in Amsterdam (Holland), Frankfurt (Germany), Madrid (Spain), Paris (France), Milan (Italy), Lisbon (Portugal) and London (UK).
North America will have three offices: North America I, based in New York, will serve the states of New York, Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Washington D.C, Michigan, North Carolina, Virginia, Indiana, Maryland, South Carolina, Connecticut, Vermont, Delaware, Rhode Island, Maine, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky and West Virginia. The EBT North America II office, located in Los Angeles, will serve the states of California, Arizona, Nevada, Washington, Utah, Kansas, Colorado, Oregon, Montana, Wyoming, Hawaii, Alaska and Mexico.
The North America III office in Chicago will serve the states of Illinois, Idaho, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Louisiana, Mississippi and also Canada.
Our main source of tourists, South America, will also have two offices. South America I based in Buenos Aires will serve Argentina, Uruguay and Chile. EBT South America II will be based in Lima and shall carry out activities for Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Ecuador and Venezuela.
For the Asian market, the Brazilian Tourism Office will be based in the city of Tokyo (Japan) and will aim to promote integrated tours within South America in view of the partnership with Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. The contracts for all of the offices will amount to R$ 7.5 million per year.
We know that packages offered by tour operators are reliant on familiarity which can only be achieved through long-term business relationships and the presence of agents who can provide information to the operators. The EBTs will also act as a radar that identifies market trends and opportunities to instruct and guide Embratur's decision makers. For the foreign tourist, the advantage is that they will have real information centres about our country close to home.