The Directorate of the Galapagos National Park reported last year, travelers to the Galapagos Island increased by 14 percent over 2017 traveler totals. Tourism to the islands consistently grows around 6 percent year over year. In 2018, nearly 300,000 travelers visited the islands, known for wildlife and nature tourism.

About one-third of the visitors were domestic travelers and Ecuadorians. The next largest tourist group for the islands is Americans, making up nearly another third of all travelers to the Galapagos Islands.

In 2018, the Galapagos Islands celebrated 40 years as a UNESCO World Heritage site. The title was awarded in 1978, in honor of the destination’s unique flora and fauna.

New natural discoveries are constantly being made on the islands. This year, park rangers discovered a breed of tortoise on Fernandina Island previously thought to be extinct for more than a century. As recently as last month, a new breeding area for scalloped hammerhead sharks was discovered in the coastal area of Santa Cruz Island. The endangered sharks’ populations declined by more than 90 percent worldwide due to slow growth, low reproductive capacity and mass over-fishing.