The president of the ARHESP Algarve delegation, Cristóvão Lopes, who spoke in Águeda at the International Tourism Days, he said that the sector is currently experiencing great uncertainty with the restrictions, in a crisis that has been going on for almost two years and with no way out in sight.
– This is the biggest crisis we've ever lived, where the tourism sector lost, em média, about two thirds of its income and saw its importance for the gross domestic product fall by half, this in national terms because only in the Algarve these losses were located in the 85%, said the representative of the Hotel Association, Restauração e Similares de Portugal.
The association representative says, por isso, what or sector is in survival mode, I anticipate that the activity will go through a long and difficult recovery.
– We have several unknowns ahead of us and we are trying to adapt to the current highly volatile context, where the rules change weekly, often without any period for us to adapt, and with a very serious impact on our guests, afirmou.
To Cristóvão Lopes, the challenge is to try to understand among the changes that the pandemic has brought, which ones are cyclical and which ones are structural, it is essential to start the recovery that the issue of health security is resolved., where vaccines are one of the most relevant aspects.
Despite the 'clouds' that still hang over the sector, the ARHESP representative said he was optimistic about the future, noting that as long as the measures were relaxed, people have gone back to traveling and want to do it again.
‘And now… what a future’ was the main theme of the VI International Tourism Journeys, which this year took place in a model that combined the face-to-face format with the online, nos dias 16 e 17 de Julho, no Arts Center of Águeda (CAA).
In this edition, some themes were addressed, such as innovation, sustainability, o turismo de natureza, adventure, entre outros.
