The 29 th of July 2025 Santa Marta will become the first existing South American city to celebrate 500
years.
On July 29, 1525, the Spanish conqueror Rodrigo de Bastidas and his troops crossed the Caribbean
sea and arrived at this picturesque bay that today is known as Santa Marta.

Today Santa Marta is an attractive place to invest.

Santa Marta is the state capital of Magdalena. The federal and local government have invested huge
funds in an improved infrastructure to boost tourism and travels along its Caribbean coast and up
through the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Before the Covid-19 hit worldwide in 2020, 4.5 million international tourist travelled to Colombia (2019), of those 10% (450,000) visited Santa Marta. The Covid-19 pandemic has set the tourism sector growth back but it is expected that Colombia and Santa Marta will be back at 2019 numbers in 2024.

Santa Marta is known for its natural heritages and its sites of cultural and historical interest, such as the Sierra Nevada natural Park, with both mountainous and coastal destinations.

Santa Marta also has an International Airport that connects the city with the rest of the country andthe world, receiving a total of 2,37 million visitors during 2019.

Santa Marta is a city for business, in particular for tourist developments and agricultural production.
The Portal ‘Invest in Colombia’ place it among the least bureaucratic cities in the country, positioning it in 2nd place. This facilitates the creation of new companies, attracting national and foreign capital
attracted by tax incentives, thanks to a Decree issued by the local government in 2018.

Its privileged location on the Caribbean coast connects it, not only with nearby markets such as Venezuela or the Caribbean, but, also with other destinations such as Europe and the United States.

Logistically it is also close to the Panama Canal useful for establishing a more instantaneous commercial link with the most distant regions of the planet.

In total, Santa Marta generates 1.3% of Colombia’s total GDP.
All this makes it an attractive region for investors, national and foreign alike.

Tourism in Colombia, the statistics 2019:
Internal tourism consumption 14.5 trillion COP
Number of jobs within tourism 900 million.