Tourist operations in Beja are "more expensive" and do not "please" consumers – Publituris

Airport congestion Humberto Delgado forced a tour operator to depart from Beja airport in June and July. Promoting the use of Beja Airport for charter tourism operations in the coming summers is one of the suggestions that the Minister of Planning and Infrastructure, Pedro Marques, has presented at a parliamentary hearing this Wednesday.

For the President of the Portuguese Association of Travel Agencies and Tourism, Pedro Costa Ferreira, the suggestion presented presents two problems: the airport of Beja "is not a less expensive infrastructure for tourist exploitation "and" is a "

The official, expressing on the sidelines of the presentation of the 44th National Congress APAVT, explains that" the main difficulty is the geographical location, which completely removes the consumer market one of the most important destinations, if not the most important, for Portuguese tourist operations. "Costa Ferreira explains that for these passengers it is more convenient to catch a plane in Vigo or Madrid to take more time than the flight itself to get to Lisbon and then to Beja by bus

. operations carried out last June from Beja, the official indicated that the latter, initially complete, leave only half the capacity, the other half of the passengers abandoning and having been refunded in full, the cost being absorbed by the tour operator himself. Thanks to this experience, the Beja solution has proven to be able to provoke a "weak adhesion" and a satisfaction of the consumers.

The president of the APAVT acknowledges that "it is a great merit [o ministro] to be concerned about the situation," but adds that there are more effective solutions in the short and in the medium term. "The APAVT knows that there are structuring solutions, some short term and beneficial for the operation of Lisbon airport. One of them is the closure of track 17/35, which allowed for greater aircraft parking capacity, and with this higher level of performance and punctuality and, more than that, would allow the construction of the new tower [de controlo aéreo] absolutely necessary for a new air traffic control system without which these performance levels do not improve either In the short term, I would say that the solution is on our side. "According to the official, the Use of track 17/35 is less than 1%, but "apparently everyone is in agreement, (…) except for the Portuguese Air Line Pilots Association, which I'm not aware of any other entity that does not want to do that. "The APAVT President maintains that if the runway was closed to allow the aircraft to be parked, which disrupted the normal operation of the slots at the airport, "a very large increase of our activities in Lisbon" would occur. [19659002] In the medium term, there is the complementary airport of Montijo: "The great truth is that until we have the decision to move to Montijo, we do not have the solution medium term. The sooner the better, even if it takes four years. Everyone expects the Montijo solution to allow an increase in hourly movements from 38 to over 70, everything is said about the power of this solution. "

Pedro Costa Ferreira reinforces that the proposed options," in the medium term, in addition to improving the ability to make outbound tourism operations, are much more important to the country, as they allow a sharp increase in operations of "incoming", which is where the tourist receipts come from. "