Visitors to Machu Picchu decreased in 2023

Cusco: the Sacsayhuamán archaeological complex almost doubles the number of visitors to Machu Picchu.

The Foreign Trade Society of Peru (ComexPerú) attributed the drop in visitors to Machu Picchu to «bad decisions made by the authorities, especially by Jose Bastante, head of the Machu Picchu archaeological park.»

The visits of 955,000 tourists to the archaeological complex of Sacsayhuamán, in the city of Cusco, practically doubled those made to the archaeological sanctuary of Machu Picchu.

This year Sacsayhuamán became the most visited archaeological site in Cusco, displacing Machu Picchu and the sacred valley of the Incas.

Citing figures from the Ministry of Culture, ComexPerú indicated, in a press release, that Sacsayhuamán received 502,656 Peruvian tourists and 453,130 foreign tourists until last August, while Machu Picchu received a total of 548,137 visitors, of which 367,943 were foreigners and 180,194 Peruvians.

Sacsayhuaman

What measures contributed to the drop in visitors to Machu Picchu?

Starting in 2022, the head of the Machu Picchu archaeological park decided to reduce the number of tickets sold per day in the Llacta Inca. The reduction was approximately 1,000 tickets per day.

Additionally, starting in August of last year, the Ministry of Culture decided that 25% of tickets to visit Machu Picchu be sold in person.

However, the tourism unions of Cusco expressed that a ticket sales mafia had been generated, which is seriously affecting the image of the country’s tourism, indicated ComexPerú.

The Foreign Trade Society added that it has become “an unsustainable situation, which has been hitting thousands of entrepreneurs in the tourism sector” and said that the solution is to sell all tickets through transparent digital platforms and to return to sell the 5,044 daily tickets that were sold to enter Machu Picchu.

It should be remembered that the lost city of the Incas received 1.5 million tourists in 2019 and that last year this figure dropped to one million visitors to Machu Picchu, while Sacsayhuamán had 1.8 million tourists.