The central objective of this article is to analyze the debates about the tourism in different instances of international and Pan-American cooperation between 1920 and 1950. Although historical research on tourism is booming in some Latin American countries, many of them focus on a limited look at national borders without going beyond the national perspective of the problem. The results highlight the positioning of tourism as a national industry in the 1920s and 1930s, which made it possible to consolidate the tourist destinations of some countries in the region in the travel market worldwide. Tourism also made possible measures of cooperation between countries and coordination of efforts to increase the number of tourists, although in negative terms, the efforts did not advance effective collaboration and regional integration strategies over time. Chile and Argentina as studied as case studies.