(26th August). Today’s main news story : ‘Operators Abandon – Of the various agents, just the Italian is able to continue operating on Porto Santo. The situation with the hotels becomes complicated. The capital Vila Baleira gets closer and closer to closing for the Winter’. Same old thing, and if anyone had asked me yesterday who is interested in Porto Santo for a Winter holiday, my answer would have been the Italians and a few Madeirans. This is not news, everyone knows it, especially those poor people who rely on tourism on Porto Santo. Anyway, the occupancy rate of around 15 to 20% last year is likely to drop even further. Marco Ferreira, Director of the Hotel Porto Santo Vila Baleira Paradisius Resort & SPA, a unit that relies heavily on the Italian operator during the cold season, expects "an occupancy rate of around 2%". Even worse will be one or two months without any customers, and that is "dramatical". "Given the economic situation in Italy, where things are also tough," what we are expecting is for it to be a very bad time he anticipates. "Better to be home sleeping than to be here to see this". Another hotelier complains that Porto Santo is disadvantaged more than other destinations, because of the lack of flights, which are expensive and infrequent. Two of the readers comments in the Diário are : "turn the record over" and "who builds a hotel in the Sahara desert and then complains that there is a lack of transport", sum up the situation much better than I could. It’s sad, but there is a way out of this, and it’s not through a talking shop that does nothing other than complain.
‘More Than 600 Russians In Two Months – New connection of TAP between Moscow and Lisbon channels more tourists to Madeira’. Between 9th June and 31st July over 600 Russian tourists used the new service to travel to Madeira, by a connecting flight. The new route operates 5 times a week, coming from Domodedovo on the outskirts of Moscow, and so far has had an occupation rate of around 75%. TAP expects around 2,500 Russians to connect to Madeira by the end of this year. Good news for tourism, especially as on average the Russians spend 3 times as much as the average German tourist.
‘French Airline Starts Flights To Madeira In October – Aigle Azur will make a weekly connection between Funchal and Paris’. I am pretty sure this was covered some time ago, but anyway the first flight is on 24th October, and then on Saturdays thereafter, leaving Orly at 2.45 pm arriving here at 5 pm. The return leg leaves Madeira Airport at 6 pm, arriving in Paris at 22.25 pm. More information and bookings HERE