6M people partied in Rio Carnival season

Almost six million people participated in various activities in the Carnival season in Rio de Janeiro, the city’s tourism company Riotur said on Wednesday. (Photo: Leandro Neumann Ciuffo/Flickr)

RIO DE JANEIRO—Almost six million people participated in various activities in the Carnival season in Rio de Janeiro, the city’s tourism company Riotur said on Wednesday.

Riotur said 5,982,700 people, among locals and tourists, attended the hundreds of Carnival blocks and parades in the Carnival season in the country, which starts a bit earlier than the actual Carnival holiday.

Rio received 1.1 million foreign tourists during Carnival week, who spent some three billion reals (964 million U.S. dollars) in the city, Riotur said.

Alongside the New Year holidays, Carnival is the most crowded and lucrative season for the local tourism sector.

Average hotel occupation was 78 percent during the Carnival holiday. Fourteen cruise ships, which was filled with some 50,000 tourists, docked in the city in Carnival.

A poll carried out among foreign tourists who attended the samba schools parade, in Rio’s Sambadrome, showed that 94 percent of foreigners said they were satisfied with the city and would return in another occasion.

Out of those, 91.9 percent would recommend a visit to Rio to their friends, and 17.4 percent intend to return to Rio in 2017.