According to the president of AAVOTA, Catarina Oliveira, the tourism sector is being affected by the reduced mobility of people as a result of the coronavirus, a scenario that "aggravates" the current inactive capacity in the supply of products and services.
"Of course we are affected, if we were already with our idle capacity in the supply of products and services, at the restaurant and hotel level, now it is even worse in the face of this situation", she told Lusa this Thursday.
Catarina Oliveira points out that the flow from abroad "every day is decreasing", but internally, she stressed, "people are increasingly" circulating "despite the problems of access roads".
"However, they are not buying the services of operators in the sector because they are only staying with relatives, and this way we have empty hotels, resorts and restaurants", she said.
For the leader of the travel agency association, the current uncertainties should be an opportunity to "rethink, rethink and redesign" models for a "greater boost and sustainability" of domestic tourism as a source of income for the country.
"We have potential in the tourism sector, but our problem is the demand for the product that needs to be structured in order to be able to buy the products of tourism services", she stressed.
Nearly 120 agencies are registered with the association, which admits that the number is tending to decrease because "every day travel agencies die".
Transforming travel agencies, especially those with capacity, into tour operators for the production of attractive in-house packages is one of the Association's ongoing measures to reverse the current 'worrying picture'.
"That's why we've sought incentives for micro-credit to boost these agencies, to create the tourist package and try to boost domestic tourism", she concluded.
