Machu Picchu tourism suffering after protests against new ticketing system
Tourism in Peru's Machu Picchu is suffering amid a week-long protest over the outsourcing of entry ticket sales to a private company.
LIMA, Peru — The streets, hotels and restaurants around the ruins of Machu Picchu — Peru’s most famous tourist attraction — remained almost deserted Wednesday, with train service to the area canceled amid a week-long protest over the outsourcing of entry ticket sales to a private company.
Small businesses and workers in the tourism sector fear the new ticketing system imposed by Peru’s government 10 days ago will hurt them while benefiting big companies, and their protests have slowed visitor arrivals to a trickle.
“This seems like the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, you hardly see any people,” said Roger Monzón, an employee at the Inkas Land hotel in the Machu Picchu district, an 18-room building currently housing only two tourists from Portugal.
Train service to the area was suspended late Friday until further notice, so the few tourists who persist in going, most of them young, leave the Andean city of Cusco in cars that take them 130 miles to a hydroelectric plant. From there they walk two hours to reach the Machu Picchu district, where they rest. Then they have to walk to the stone citadel for 2 1/2 hours.
The protests, which began Jan. 24, are in response to the government’s decision to outsource the sale of tickets for entering the Machu Picchu site to Joinnus, a virtual ticket sales platform owned by one of the wealthiest economic groups in Peru.
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