Tourism is a dynamic industry for developing countries, examples such as Mexico and Peru have shown a positive development of the sector, and in recent years, Colombia has also experienced a growing importance compared to other Latin American countries. Within the country, according to Plan Sectorial de Turismo Nacional 2008 2011 Un Destino de Clase Mundial , there are four main drivers of tourism: Ecological, Cultural, Health, and Convention and Event tourism. The final goal of this document is to find the main factors that influenced the monthly arrival of foreign travelers to Colombia 2004 2007, through the development of a panel data model with random effects, using micro and macroeconomic, as also geographic and cultural explanatory variables. As a result, lagged arrivals and index of trade have a positive influence on the present number of arrivals, on the contrary an increase on the number of kidnappings has proven to diminish this figure.
