Minister says package will be “essential to help tourism companies “modernise and develop” their properties
Portugal’s Minister of Economy announced today that the government is launching a programme worth €50 million to help tourism companies renovate their real estate assets.
António Costa e Silva was speaking at the 33rd National Congress of Hotels and Tourism, promoted by AHP, which is being held in Fátima.
The minister said that “this announcement will come out today, and it will be essential” to help tourism companies “to modernise and develop” their properties, enabling “sale and leaseback,” a transaction in which a company sells its property and then rents it back.
Earlier at the same congress, the president of the Hotel Association of Portugal (AHP), Bernando Trindade, stressed that 2022 “has been exceptional” in the recovery of confidence, but that “realistically”, tourism, the key to economic recovery, still needs to be helped.
The AHP boss recalled that the war in Ukraine brought “such a degree of uncertainty in the construction of the tourism value chain” that it is impossible to say “what level of results” the sector will close this year with.
In addition, “everything is more expensive”, from the cost of labour, to electricity and gas, the food chain and various services. These factors mean that the outlook remains “uncertain”, he said.
Trindade warned that extending the maturities of credit lines was necessary to support Covid-19, which in many cases, were now coming to an end.
Regarding the €3 billion package of support for businesses to cope with the increase in electricity and gas bills that Prime Minister António Costa has announced, Bernardo Trindade said that AHP expects that hotels will be “included in that aid package”.
Source: Lusa
