The Mayor of Portimão, Isilda Gomes, has been out and about visiting two important local business ratepayers at new tourist projects in and around Portimão.
The first was the refurbished Bela Vista Hotel in Praia da Rocha which was transformed from a 1918 mansion into an hotel in 1934 and needed doing again.
Hotéis de Charme, S.A., has been investing in a significant refurbishment of the 38 rooms and suites at the hotel while working with the hotel’s original architecture.
Isilda Gomes then went to Alvor beach to see what Pestana Group has been doing at a site which is using two old towers at Torralta. This is the only hotel under construction in the Algarve and is making use of structures that have been sat there for 40 years or more.
The 4 star hotel will be open next summer, with 90 rooms at a cost of €7.6 million.
The Association of Tourism Portimão has not been idle as staff manned a stand at the Barcelona ‘Seatrade Med’ exhibition and congress, one of the major international events of the cruise industry.
The Association’s stand for ‘Cruise Port Portimão’ was helped out by staff from the Port Administration of Sines and Algarve which now manages Portimão’s port and infrastructure from afar and seems unconcerned that this Algarve port continues to lack cruise ship capacity and onshore facilities.
The press release from the Association of Tourism Portimão stated that at this important event it aims to “promote Portimão and its port infrastructure, while recognising its importance to the city and at the region level, specifically with regard to the economy through the multiplier effects generated locally and regionally in the port of Portimão.”
The reality is that the harbour needs dredging to allow larger cruise ships to dock. Despite ministerial promised stretching back for years nothing has happened in this regard, apart from the commissioning of yet another report which is promised for this year but in reality is unlikely to be looked at until after next year’s elections.
www.visitportimao.com
