Vilamoura Marina has won the Best Marina category in the Publituris Portugal Trade Awards 2018. The Marina’s managing director, Isolete Correia, described the award as a “huge honour.”
Another winner was the Salgados Palace & Congress Centre which won the Best Congress Establishment category, a remarkable turnaround for the investors who bought the bankrupt business next to the Herdade dos Salgados Golf course, finished constructing the vast development and launched the hotel and congress centre during the recession.
The Algarve, unsurprisingly as Portugal's premier tourism money generator, had submitted 14 nominations for consideration at the Publituris Portugal Trade Awards, the winners of which were announced on the opening day of Lisbon’s BTL tourism exhibition, visited by the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Tourism, Ana Mendes Godinho.
Vilamoura Marina, which Isolete Correia noted had been operating for 44 years, manages to shine as a business despite the uncertainty generated by the tract of development land to the west, Vilamoura lakes, still owned by US vulture fund, Lone Star, which seems to have little idea what to do with it.
Last autumn, the US company appointed sales agency, CBRE, to sell off the development in parcels or as a job lot - either way, the Americans appeared to want to ditch their expensive mistake. The fund paid €200 million for the site, well below the €360 million that Catalunya Banc had paid André Jordan when he sold out, but a price that appears to be well below its current market value.
In September 2015, the then-CEO of Vilamoura World, Paul Taylor, announced a €1 billion investment in the project to renovate the marina's surrounding area and develop 18 separate real estate projects, "scheduled for completion by 2020." This plan lacked logic and style, but nothing happened anyway
In October 2016, Paul Taylor was replaced by Juan Gómez-Vega who since has been replaced by Dominique Cressot who also has failed to sort out the mess.
Vilamoura Marina continues to serve its clients and is well placed to benefit when the future of the adjacent development is settled.
See also, 'Lone Star ditches Vilamoura World'
