Our National Holidays will now include one more day of celebration, after the Senate passed a bill to declare next Friday, September 16 a national holiday.
The celebrations, which originally covered Saturday, September 17, Sunday, September 18 and Monday, September 19, will now include an extra day, Friday, September 16, for a total four days of celebration.
Labor Minister Jeannette Jara explained that the Government has supported this initiative because of the role that the National Holidays can play in recovering areas of the Chilean economy, such as activities linked to culture, hotels, tourism, gastronomy and commerce. These areas have been severely affected in recent years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The holidays are also an opportunity for people to get together.
With the extra day of celebration, the Tourism Undersecretary’s Office predicts 1,727,519 overnight trips, 42.4% more than the same period in 2021, and 1.8% more than the 2019 National Holidays before the pandemic, when celebrations lasted five days.
It is also predicted that the three main regions from which people will travel will be the Metropolitan Region (846,083 trips), the Biobío Region (170,067) and the Valparaíso Region (124,443). The three main regions to which people will travel will be the Valparaíso Region (423,758 trips), the O’Higgins Region (204,477) and the Metropolitan Region (188,270).
Labor Undersecretary Giorgio Boccardo explained that the bill “seeks to make it possible to combine and reconcile festivity spaces with everyone’s well-being in order to celebrate the National Holidays, and strengthen the recovery of economic sectors that have been left behind, such as tourism, hotels, commerce and transportation.”