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Brazil Sees Record Number of Tourists in 2016, Boosted by Olympics


FILE - Neymar, second from right, and his Brazil teammates pose with their gold medals after defeating Germany to win the Olympics soccer final in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Aug. 20, 2016.
FILE - Neymar, second from right, and his Brazil teammates pose with their gold medals after defeating Germany to win the Olympics soccer final in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Aug. 20, 2016.

Brazil saw a record number of international tourists in 2016, boosted by the first Olympic Games held in South America, official data showed on Wednesday.

A total 6.6 million international travelers visited Brazil last year, the tourism ministry said, 4.8 percent higher than the year before.

They injected $6.2 billion into the Brazilian economy, compared to $5.84 billion in 2015.

Brazil is the most popular destination in Latin America but lags far behind the world's top 10 popular destinations, according to United Nations figures for 2015. France was the world's most popular tourist destination in the world with 84.5 million visitors in 2015, the United Nations said.

“We still have a lot to do to benefit in an efficient manner from the image legacy of the Olympic Games,” Brazil's Tourism Minister Marx Beltrão said in a statement.

Of those who visited Brazil last year, 95 percent intended to return, according to a tourism ministry survey.

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    Reuters

    Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.

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