Vila Real de Santo António council has announced that next week the refurbishment and development work at the Hotel Guadiana is to start.
The hotel has been ‘a building of municipal interest’ since 2010 but has been allowed to stand empty for years despite its prime position in the city and the building’s credentials - designed by architect Ernesto Korrodi and built between 1918 and 1921.
The work is being carried out by a council-owned company called Sociedade de Gestão Urbana de Vila Real de Santo António (SGU) the appointment of which needed to be approved by a court.
Last November the council launched a public tender for the work which its own company now seems to have won.
The €2 million budget will be covered by a grant from the Jessica Initiative (Joint European Support for Sustainable Investment in City Areas) and work is optimistically estimated to last just ten months.
The complete renovation will produce a 31 room, five-star hotel, which, says the mayor, will promote quality tourism - the latest buzz word for all mayors.
The hotel refurb is but one part of the redevelopment of the VRSA river frontage which the council estimates will cost €150 million.
The hotel contract includes the renovation of a building at Ponta da Areia, the mouth of the River Guadiana, which will function as a beach club.
The Guadiana Hotel development is part of the council’s plan to "transform the historical centre into a reference point for tourism, putting in motion an ambitious project that aims to convert old properties into a range charming accommodation units."
In November last year the plan was for the council to contract out the Hotel Guadiana refurbishment work and then to lease the hotel to the South African leisure company - Grand Africa.
In February 2015 the council reported that the contract for the hotel’s rebirth already had been won in an 'open competition' by a group of Portuguese businessmen who already had a contract with Grand Africa.
The mayor said at the end of last year that "the contract with this South African hotel group is signed, and it delivered the required guarantees. So now, the Guadiana Hotel refurbishment process is irreversible."
Today’s announcement from VRSA council makes no mention of the South African hotel group but a report in March 2016 in Publituris claimed that the SA group indeed had acquired the building.
