Tourism is one of the sectors most affected by Covid-19. The UN-World Tourism Organization issued rules for Sustainable Tourism:
- diversify markets, products & services;
- invest in market intelligence & digital transformation;
- raise tourism governance;
- develop national emergency systems;
- invest in human capital;
- make sustainable tourism a priority;
- focus on circular economy.
Nice words, but WHAT to do and HOW to do it?
OUR PROPOSALS, TO DO NOW:
- use unemployment in sector to qualify people, eg in empathy;
- speed up support for SME liquidity;
- arrange online events to end with an invitation for a future visit;
- offer vouchers in exchange for canceled reservations;
- promote online language skills in unusual tongues;
- update public transport in regional workshops and offer more coaches and wagons selling half of the seats;
- offer more fam-trips with CV tests when disembarking at destination;
- finance updating hotels now closed, to meet energy rules, eg solar panels, air-cond by underground water;
- ditto to save water, such as water-free urinals (uridan);
- ditto to reuse water for cleaning and irrigation;
- compel & finance cities with more than 30k residents to use digesters to clean sewage and use its biogas in busses;
- spread digital visa, to avoid queues in pass-control;
- organise and finance off-season cultural events, to avoid crowds in a few months of the year, and to attract visitors for future longer stays;
- promote more and better capture of evaluations and suggestions from visitors, so they stay for more days in the future;
- diversify marketing more by niche;
- listen to more foreigners residing in the country and emigrants, on these potential niches.
OUR PROPOSALS for 2021:
Our tourism for decades has focused on sun-beach-golf. It financed mega-enterprises that have profited a lot. The trend of the past decade will increase. The web offered the citizen a profile. Cartels increasingly offer only what interest them, not what the citizen wants. The new tourist demands something specific. You wish savors, not just a meal. Adults wish what they felt long ago, pureness, not just knowledge. They want emotions, not just visions; to BE, not to HAVE. Thus…
- finance transforming old mansions into-boutique hotels;
- for four years prevent funding accommodation larger than 40 rooms;
- promote local agriculture and hinder imported ones;
- publicise local dishes and wines; hinder additives and chemicals, and drinks produced or dictated from abroad;
- stop tax benefits to corporations that bring foreign artists, instead of national ones;
- ditto to corporations that promote events only where they have HQs;
- for two years levy tax on the purchase/rental of vans by tourist guides, boost small group tourism, which leaves a strong impression on visitors;
- finance only electric tuk-tuk and by 2023 ban all others;
Some of these proposals are against the ECB and EU wishes. But if Portugal is firm, it proves that without them, the vital update of the type of tourism in our country, from quantity to quality, will not take place.
