João Fernandes, the new president of the Algarve Tourism Region (RTA), wants "to reinforce the region's diversification and rejuvenation strategy, focusing on sustainable development, capturing talent and investment, and technological modernisation."
He continues, "The region has to develop new ways of attracting visitors, namely through Business Tourism, Nautical Tourism, Accessible Tourism and Sports. We want to be active agents of investment capture, which helps to requalify the offer and bring innovation in products and services," says João Fernandes in a statement that managed to cloak his mission in almost impenetrable marketing jargon.
The RTA already is working on a portfolio of buildings in tourist areas that either are empty or in degraded state. The tourist board aim to ‘disseminate this heritage to potential investors,’ or, in simpler terms, tell people about them when the paperwork is sorted out.
Joao Fernandes also pledges to work with the Algarve Tourism Association (ATA) on the common definition of a new External Promotion Model, "which will guide the strengthening and capture of new air routes in the next three years," and reinforce cooperation with the regional development agency (CCDR-A) and the Councils on issues such as mobility, new Local Accommodation regulations and the definition of the Municipal Tourist Tax.
Despite these new priorities, João Fernandes is continuing to promote areas such as Cycling & Walking and the Algarve Nature Week.
Included in his roster of promotional activities is 365 Algarve and Algarve Cooking Vacations. Fernandes says these “have contributed to filling vacancies in the region and changing consumption profiles.” This is a highly contentious statement when looking at the €1.5 million spent on the deeply flawed '365 Algarve' programme - an amount largely wasted on running local, poorly publicised events that attract people already in the region during the off-season rather than bringing new people to the region, the programme's aim.
The Algarve Cooking vacations programme involves €500,000 of EU funds to 'look at wine and cooking tourism in the Algarve.'
Launched in September 2017, this ‘heavy investment’ involves analysing the existing niche market of culinary and oenological tourism in the ‘Algarve Cooking Vacations’ project, involving the Regional Tourism Authority, the Tourism Association of the Algarve and one lucky Faro restaurant owner, João Amaro, whose 'Vila Adentro,' lies not far from the Tourist Board’s vast and shiny office building.
This is where the Algarve Cooking Vacations will be tested over the next two years in a project co-financed by the European Union, under CRESC Algarve 2020, which is paying out for a study, training workshops with experts, the creation of programmes and routes, the publication of a cookbook and the internal and external promotion of this new tourism product. No mention of this is made on the participating restaurant’s website or Facebook pages and it is wholly expected that little of the more than generous budget will be consumed by 'administration' costs.
João Fernandes took office as the new president of the regional tourism body on July 27, replacing Desidério Silva - so it's not all bad news - and is determined to continue pushing initiatives that are poorly thought out or are failing in their mission.
At the Fernandes inauguration, the Secretary of State for Tourism, Ana Mendes Godinho, announced a way for tourism companies in the Algarve to take on more debt, a further €30 million was her chosen headline figure.
"What we felt was the need, in the case of the Algarve, to allocate a specific amount, within the scope of the new credit line we are launching, precisely for the requalification and product innovation in the Algarve," announced Godinho.
This instrument, launched by Turismo de Portugal in partnership with the banking sector, will have a clause just for Algarve companies that exempts them from paying back 20% of the money borrowed. It was not made clear who will pay this final 20% but it's likely that the taxpayer will be picking up the tab, via its generous funding of the national tourism board.
"We think that there needs to be a special incentive here, given the difficulties in accessing EU funds," said Godinho.
The Secretary of State for Tourism said that the Algarve "needs repositioning, needs new products and requalification of some products that are in need of investment," but then stuck to vacuous generalities rather than citing specific cases despite narrowing the area down to 'AL' local tourist rentals, hostels, tourist enterprises, restaurants and tourist activity companies – which covers just about everything except flights and hotels.
The credit line was created in 2016, with a budget of €60 million and topped up in 2017 with €75 million, "an amount that already has been used up by 211 tourism projects throughout the country," added Godinho.
The two issues referred to by Fernandes - new Local Accommodation regulations and the definition of the Municipal Tourist Tax - are key areas of work where the tourist board's new president usefully could spend some time.
