Tourism direct GDP | Tourism direct employment (2024) | Travel exports (2024) |
|---|---|---|
- | 4.0% of total employment (equal to share in 2023) | 15.3% of total service exports (up 0.1 percentage points since 2023) |
OECD Tourism Trends and Policies 2026
National tourism strategy: National Tourism Plan 2024-2027
Responsible government agency: Ministry of Tourism
National tourism budget: BRL 3.90 billion
Key tourism policy priorities and actions:
Strengthening professional qualification in tourism – Expanding access to professional training and upskilling opportunities in the tourism sector with free training offered across multiple areas.
Promoting digital skills and the adoption of new technologies – Integrating digital transformation and innovation content into training courses, addressing topics such as digital marketing, online customer services, and the use of technological tools to manage tourism businesses.
Expanding and simplifying access to credit for the tourism sector – Providing credit facilitation and incentive programmes to support private sector investment to improve tourism infrastructure and services and/or the establishment of new tourism businesses.
Tourism is an important economic sector in Brazil and offers strong untapped growth potential as it continues to recover from the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic. Travel and tourism supported 2.3 million formal jobs in 2024, or 4.0% of total employment. This was equal to the share in 2023 and slightly above the level in 2019, when the sector accounted for 2.1 million jobs.
In 2025, Brazil received a record 9.3 million international arrivals. This represents a 37.1% increase compared to 2024, when there were almost 6.8 million international arrivals. Spending by international tourists accounted for almost USD 7.9 billion in 2025, exceeding pre-pandemic levels in nominal terms by 31.2%. The top international inbound markets are Argentina (36.5%), Chile (8.6%), the United States (8.2%), and Paraguay (5.7%).
The Ministry of Tourism is the Federal authority in charge of tourism policy in Brazil. Among its main responsibilities, the Ministry develops, supervises, and evaluates tourism programmes across the country. It also promotes Brazil as a tourism destination, stimulates innovation, entrepreneurship, and investment in the tourism sector, fosters financing programmes and access to credit, through the General Tourism Fund, and inspects tourism service providers.
The Ministry of Tourism also collaborates with other ministries to formulate policies and programmes aimed at improving infrastructure, generating employment and income, and dealing with crises, resilience and climate action in tourism destinations. Since 2023, the reinstated Ministry of Culture handles the cultural agenda, allowing the Ministry of Tourism to concentrate solely on tourism matters.
Embratur, the Brazilian Agency for the International Promotion of Tourism, is a national organisation whose objective is to design, develop and implement actions for promoting Brazilian tourism products, services and destinations abroad, supervised by the Ministry of Tourism. Additionally, the Tourism National Council is made up of high level members and authorities from the executive branch, entities from various segments related to the travel industry and strategic players from the private and public sector, whose decisions are taken collectively.
Tourism is a shared competence in Brazil, designed and implemented at national, state and municipal levels. The Ministry of Tourism collaborates directly with regional and local authorities through its policies, as well as through collegial bodies established within the structure of the Ministry or created by federal entities. Regional Tourism Governance Bodies are multistakeholder co-ordination entities, established within Brazil’s National Tourism Regionalisation Programme, that function as a decentralised governance mechanism. They bring together representatives from the public sector, private enterprises, and civil society to plan, implement, and manage tourism development strategies at the regional level.
Source: OECD, adapted from the Ministry of Tourism, 2026.
The National Tourism Plan 2024-2027 helps to guide tourism development in Brazil. The Plan is structured around three key pillars of development – social and guarantee of rights, economic and socio-economic and environmental sustainability, and defence of democracy and reconstruction of the State and sovereignty – and sets bold tourist arrivals targets: Brazil aims to welcome 8.1 million international tourists and 150 million domestic tourists by 2027, consolidating its position as the largest tourism economy in South America. Implementation of the National Tourism Plan is achieved through the development of various programmes, which are designed with contributions from the National Tourism Council and its Thematic Chambers.
The General Tourism Law, adopted in 2008 and updated in 2024, helps better attract and facilitate investment in the sector by modernising the regulatory framework, increasing legal certainty, and creating specific instruments to simplify the creation of new ventures. The legislation also provides for measures to improve the business environment, such as reducing bureaucracy, training the workforce, stimulating innovation, and integrating sustainability policies to promote a more efficient, transparent, and competitive tourism ecosystem.
The Plan and Law have established concrete goals for regional development and sustainability. They consolidate regionalisation instruments as government policy and formally recognise municipal, regional, state, and federal governance bodies as pillars of decentralised and co-operative tourism management in Brazil. The guidelines are complemented by the National Tourism Regionalisation Programme which aims to strengthen decentralised governance, encouraging the formation of Regional Tourism Governance Bodies and tourist circuits in line with national policies. This model allows for the adaptation of policies to local realities. These changes are creating a shift towards a more integrated, participatory, and results-oriented governance model, in which co-operation between federal entities, the private sector, and civil society is fundamental to the development of tourist destinations and the strengthening of sustainable territorial development.
Brazil has also committed to climate action. In March 2026, the Ministry of Tourism launched the Climate Adaptation for Tourism Programme within the scope of the National Tourism Plan. It comprises 24 goals to be achieved by 2027, ranging from financing sustainable initiatives to training professionals and strengthening risk management. These goals will serve as an official guide, with actions and monitoring tools, to make Brazilian tourism more competitive. Brazil aims to incorporate adaptive strategies into local and regional tourism policies, ensuring that the tourism sector is prepared to face the challenges posed by climate change, in line with the principles of responsible tourism and sustainability. In doing so, it contributes to Brazil’s broader climate commitments and to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
The priorities of the General Co-ordination for Qualification in Tourism have been updated to reflect the new demands of the labour market and the national guidelines for modernising professional training. There has been a stronger emphasis on digital qualification, regional inclusion, and sustainability as key pillars of training initiatives. The Qualifica Turismo Programme (2023–2025) offered free courses in areas such as hospitality, tour guiding, management, and foreign languages, targeting formal and informal workers, micro-entrepreneurs, and students. Training activities were carried out in partnership with S System Institutions, public and private universities, and state and municipal tourism departments. By the end of 2024, over 25 000 individuals had been trained nationwide. In December 2025, the Ministry of Tourism published the Professional Qualification and Productive Integration in Tourism Programme, within the scope of the National Tourism Plan. The programme establishes ambitious goals until 2027, involving the qualification of 21 000 people through actions that respect regional demand profiles.
Additional key programmes include:
The Tourism Innovation and Competitiveness Programme: launched April 2026, it aims to stimulate the intelligent transformation of conventional destinations, as well as implementing and assisting the management of groups and networks focused on the creative economy and intelligence in tourism, strengthening governance, competitiveness, and the economic attractiveness of Brazilian tourist destinations.
Standard for Smart Tourism Destinations: establishes the requirements and recommendations for Smart Tourism Destinations in Brazil. Launched in 2025 by the Ministry of Tourism, it aims to increase the competitiveness, sustainability, governance, technology, and accessibility of tourist destinations.
REVIVE Brazil Programme: aims to redevelop idle public properties of historical and architectural value for tourism use, through concession and partnership models, promoting heritage preservation and local development (see box below).
The Brazilian Long-Distance Trail Network: as part of a priority to improve connectivity and tourist mobility the Network connects conservation units, rural areas, and traditional communities, promoting nature tourism and active mobility.
Brazil has a vast built heritage, often in a state of neglect or underutilisation. The lack of public resources for restoration and maintenance compromised the preservation of these assets and prevented their economic and social use. The challenge was to create a model for heritage enhancement that would reconcile conservation, tourism use, and local income generation without burdening the state.
The REVIVE Brazil Programme, inspired by the Portuguese model REVIVE Portugal, aims to repurpose underutilised public properties with historical, cultural, or architectural value to support the tourism sector. REVIVE Brazil utilises public-private partnerships and concessions of use, which allow the reuse of historic buildings for tourism purposes to establish hotels, cultural centres, restaurants, and other sustainable tourist facilities.
The programme establishes an innovative model of interministerial co-operation, with the Ministry of Tourism acting as the granting authority and the Ministry of Management and Innovation in Public Services responsible for the transfer of properties, in co-ordination with National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage and local governments. Each property is subject to technical studies, architectural designs, and concession notices guided by criteria of sustainability, economic viability, and positive sociocultural impact.
REVIVE Brazil has projects underway in different states, including Forte Orange (Pernambuco), Diamantina Railway Station (Minas Gerais), Fazenda Pau D'Alho (São Paulo), and Fortaleza de Santa Catarina (Paraíba). The expectation is to generate private investment in the redevelopment of public heritage, preserve listed properties, create direct and indirect jobs, and expand the range of cultural and historical tourist attractions and destinations.