Guatemala Races to Profit From ‘Survivor’ Publicity

It’s just a matter of time before somebody here starts the Survivor Reality Tour.

Employees at Yaxha-Nakum-Naranjo National Park laugh about one American who, unfazed by the scorching sun, dashed like a madman from the lagoon up the hill to the archeological ruins.

They say he came to Peten state, in the northernmost region of Guatemala, to see where contestants from “Survivor: Guatemala -- The Mayan Empire” raced canoes and held tribal councils.

Guatemalan tourism officials are hoping others among the 20 million North Americans who watched the reality TV series last fall will do the same -- even those for whom swimming in crocodile-infested waters is less than appealing.

“It gave us publicity ... we could never afford,” said Ana Smith, a tourism official who received President Oscar Berger’s blessing to scout potential filming locations with CBS executives.

Although Guatemala may still be calculating the effects of reality-TV-inspired tourism, previous host countries of the show have cashed in on the increased exposure.

The Pacific island nation of Palau registered 70,000 North American visitors to its website, a fourfold increase, when “Survivor: Palau” premiered in February 2005. The tourism industry accounts for half of Palau’s $120-million gross domestic product, the estimated value of all goods and services produced.

“ ‘Survivor’ provided an excellent and worthy market opportunity and aided in putting Palau on the map -- not only in the United States market but worldwide,” said Darin De Leon, managing director of the Palau Visitors Authority.

“Survivor” pumped millions of dollars into Peten’s economy, Smith said. Cooks, construction crews and private security officers were hired from across the region during production. But Smith is hoping the economic effects last longer than a reality show’s shelf life.

“Survivor” may already be boosting tourism. Visits to Guatemala in January, the most recent month for which data are available, were up 26% compared with the same month last year.

“More Americans are coming because of the program,” said David Kuhn, a Floridian who opened the first hotel in El Remate in 1974.

Near Kuhn’s hotel, the acrid smell of burning leaves -- the result of a government mandate for slash-and-burn agriculture -- permeates the hot, dry air.

“If they don’t do something like this [use tourism to boost the economy], there’s going to be no jungle left,” Kuhn said.

Five miles from the entrance to Yaxha, Alberto Giron owns La Ruta Del Mono, a canopy-tour business on some of the only privately held forest land in Peten. In August, “Survivor” contestants zipped through the treetops on his property.

Giron’s lush parcel sticks out from the scraggly farms that line the few paved roads in Peten. He was among the few who did not slash and burn the trees from the 1,120 acres the government gave him 40 years ago as part of a land redistribution campaign.

“The Guatemalan government doled out land for free in Peten as long as the landowners cut down the forest,” Giron said as a family of howler monkeys rested in a tree above him. “If you didn’t cut down the trees, they would kick you off and find somebody who would.”

Until recently, Giron paid a tax to keep his trees. He has studied agriculture in Israel and owns a profitable cucumber farm in the highlands, where the volcanic soil can support intense farming. But in the lowlands of Peten, the peat soil and long dry season aren’t conducive to grazing livestock or growing corn, both staples of the Guatemalan diet, he said.

The government finally stopped encouraging the cutting of the forests, Giron said, and is even paying landowners to preserve what little virgin forest is left, which makes Giron’s preservation efforts more effective.

El Remate is changing in other ways. Fewer women wash clothes in the turquoise waters of the lake as washing machines gain popularity in the region.

Farmers who worked the corn fields in the hills above town are moving into tourism -- selling crafts, driving tour buses, opening small restaurants -- and relying less on animal husbandry and slash-and-burn agriculture.

Five new hotels, often consisting of just two or three rooms with a shared bathroom, are under construction. Most cater to European backpackers who pass through on their way to the ruins at Tikal -- the Machu Picchu of the Mayan empire -- or Belize. The recently completed La Lancha, an upscale resort owned by movie director Francis Ford Coppola, is also drawing visitors.

Luis Oliveres owns one of the freshly painted cement homes just off the paved road. His boisterous voice bellows from the living room as he sits in a recliner next to a 6-foot Styrofoam prop of a Mayan deity, a gift from the “Survivor” art department.

Oliveres got a cameo role on “Survivor” because the directors could prompt him lines in English. He came onto the set at a private farm and told the contestants, “Welcome to my home.”

“The neighbors love to kid me about that, and now that the show is on here, they will see it for themselves,” he said. The show aired in Guatemala the week of March 17.

Oliveres has returned to his tour-guiding business, and because he speaks fluent English, work is plentiful. He can earn upward of $100 a day, a tidy sum in a country where the average daily wage is $11.

Guatemalan tourism officials jumped at the opportunity to host “Survivor” because it highlighted a central marketing theme: Mayan heritage and archeological wonders.

More than 1.3 million tourists visited the country in 2005, an 11% increase from the previous year. They spent $870 million last year, and Smith wants to see that figure top $1 billion in the near future.

CBS executives had contacted the tourism commission’s headquarters in Guatemala City about potential filming locations, Smith said, and were excited to learn that the government would close Yaxha and secure the perimeter with 30 soldiers to keep the plot secret.

“Anytime you’re shedding light on a destination people don’t know, it’s realizing awareness,” said Peggy Bendel, senior vice president for travel marketing at Development Counsellors International, a consulting firm.

But, Bendel said, “Survivor” images “may cater to the grueling and adventurous, those looking for experience, not just landmarks or sites.”

The Guatemala edition has a reputation as the hardest “Survivor” yet. One contestant, Blake Towsley, told TVguide.com, “Guatemala is never again on my visitation list. Costa Rica, Honduras, Belize ... beautiful countries, but Guatemala is definitely the armpit of Central America.”

In truth, Peten is as hot as the cast complained it was, and a lone paved road splits El Remate on its way from Flores, the region’s capital, to Tikal.

But contestants were hardly abandoned in a remote Central American jungle. The entrance to Yaxha sits less than 7 miles off the main road. In the park, about 50 staff members lived in cabanas and had several soccer fields at their disposal. According to workers who saw the cast daily, doctors and local experts were always on hand, in addition to ubiquitous cameramen.

The Guatemalan Ministry of Culture and Sports, which runs the park, prohibited any cutting of trees or altering of archeological sites, so “Survivor” filmed many scenes on private farms. Raul Noriega, head archeologist at the park, oversaw the staff, which was temporarily reassigned from excavation and landscaping work to keep an eye on the sites.

Giron hopes more traffic to Yaxha will lead to more business at his canopy tours.

” I haven’t bought new [publicity] material yet, but when I have it printed, I am going to use ‘Survivor’ on it.”