The Government of Peru eliminated this Friday the possibility of making advance reservations to visit Machu Picchu, after verifying that the digital sales platform holds reserved tickets that are later not used and that prevent other visitors from directly purchasing their tickets.
In a press conference, the Peruvian Minister of Culture, Alberto Beingolea, stated that the measure will begin to be applied in ten days and that the system will only allow the purchase of nominal tickets, linked to an identification for each user.
According to the minister, after analyzing almost 210,000 reservations, it was determined that 131,626 were subsequently canceled, equivalent to 62.9%.
“If you enter now, you won’t find tickets until December. One can reserve several tickets and these remain blocked,” Beingolea said.
The Culture Minister explained that this situation makes it difficult for the existing demand of tourists to access tickets while the reservations remain blocked.
“Today the experience is not good. Many tourists are complaining because they cannot find tickets, and they go to Machu Picchu with the idea of finding the ticket, but that is not the case, and they have to stay longer than necessary,” he said.
Beingolea indicated that the change in the system will continue to respect the capacity limits of Machu Picchu and will not eliminate the thousand tickets that are physically put on sale daily in Machu Picchu Town.
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For his part, the Minister of Foreign Trade and Tourism, Rogers Valencia, said that the arrival of tourists is currently 2.5% below last year and almost 15% compared to 2019, the year before the pandemic.
“The first step is to improve the ticket sales system, immediately after we work on the visit models for a system that is sustainable and allows us to ensure the quality of the tourist visit,” Valencia said.
The minister added that not all who visit Machu Picchu have a historical or archaeological interest.
“Not all Machu Picchu tourists have historical or archaeological interest. Some only have a natural interest such as seeing the Inca wren, an endemic species of Machu Picchu, as well as orchid species,” he said.
Machu Picchu has become in recent decades one of the main tourist attractions of Peru and, during the high season, receives up to 5,600 visitors per day.
