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Portugal lodges face excessive demand after UK adjustments quarantine

Portugal hotels face high demand after UK changes quarantine

Beach goers sunbathe and swim on a beach in Portimao, Algarve Region, Portugal.

NurPhoto | NurPhoto | Getty Images

LONDON – Following an announcement, the tables have turned for the Portuguese hotel industry.

The UK government said on Friday that travelers from England will no longer need quarantine on their return from Portugal from May 17. You must have a Covid PCR test within two days of your arrival in the UK. However, this is a much simpler process than the rules that apply to other destinations.

Although the rules could change depending on the evolution of the epidemiological situation, British tourists quickly took the opportunity to book a vacation abroad.

It was “absolute madness in terms of (booking) inquiries,” said Katya Bauval, sales manager at the Vila Vita Parc hotel in the Algarve in southern Portugal, over the phone to CNBC.

She said “the demand for bookings has literally tripled since Friday”.

Portugal’s largest hotel chain, Pestana, has seen a similar rush for reservations. “Bookings have increased significantly,” Jose Theotonio, CEO of Pestana Hotel Group, told CNBC on Wednesday.

Pestana said demand had increased 250% since Friday and outside booking companies had increased 475%. Consumers mainly choose locations in the Algarve and Porto Santo, a small island in the Madeira archipelago.

Consumer preference is “clearly sunny destinations,” said Theotonio.

This signal from the UK government has motivated other bookings.

Jose Theotonio

CEO of the Pestana Hotel Group

Portugal also appeared to benefit from the inclusion of relatively fewer other popular European holiday destinations on the UK’s least restricted “green list”.

Spain, Italy and Greece – to name just a few of the other competing destinations in southern Europe – have not yet been added to the UK’s top traffic light list. Instead, these countries have been left on the UK’s “amber” list. If British tourists travel to Spain, Italy or Greece, they must self-isolate for 10 days upon their return.

“It was an advantage for Portugal that Greece and Spain are not on the list,” said Bauval.

“Motivated other bookings”

Portugal has become a hotspot for international visitors in recent years. In 2019, the country welcomed 24.6 million visitors – a 7.9% year-over-year increase, according to the country’s national statistics bureau.

The UK was the largest market for tourist stays in Portugal, accounting for 18.8% of the total number of overnight stays in the country. Germany followed with 12.3% of the total stays and Spain with 11%.

A woman sunbathes on a beach in Sagres, Algarve region, Portugal on July 29, 2020. Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa has promised to visit the Algarve every week this summer to help the regions struggling with the tourism sector to overcome the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and the British government decide to do so to add mainland Portugal to their travel blacklist. (Photo by Pedro Fiúza / NurPhoto via Getty Images)

NurPhoto | NurPhoto | Getty Images

But the country’s tourism industry stalled after the coronavirus. The summer season started later in 2020 and was much slower compared to previous years. Portugal was also forced to introduce a second lockdown at the beginning of 2021 as the number of Covid infections had increased sharply. However, the strict measures have now been relaxed.

“This signal from the UK government has motivated other bookings,” Theotonio also said, noting that the recent surge in demand has also come from tourists in Germany, Spain and the domestic market.

US tourists will take longer to get back

There is also a common characteristic in recent hotel bookings: its immediacy. Visitors have mainly booked stays for May and June.

This type of booking is “even more important”, Theotonio says, as it reduces the likelihood that people will have to cancel their plans.

Portugal has also attracted many non-EU visitors in recent years. In 2019, the number of American tourist stays increased by 21.3%. an increase of 16.8% over China; and a 14.9% increase from Brazil.

However, it will take longer for this request to come back.

“We believe it will take some time,” said Bauval, explaining how Vila Vita Parc had to shift its focus to attract more Europeans after the coronavirus pandemic.

This despite the announcement by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, that vaccinated Americans will be able to visit Europe this summer.

“We have no illusions,” Theotonio said, expecting only a “gradual” return to pre-pandemic activities.

Tourists pull their luggage en route to a hotel on Villamoura Beach in Villamoura, Algarve, Portugal.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

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Business

One Strategy to Get Folks Off the Streets: Purchase Motels

One Way to Get People Off the Streets: Buy Hotels

With offices booming in San Francisco and plenty of overtime opportunities, Mr. Sanchez said that at its peak it could hit a maximum of $ 22 an hour, or just over $ 60, adjusted for inflation. He wasn’t worried about the rent either. He stayed in his family’s public housing unit until his mid-twenties and had a cheap after-hours life that consisted of floating around the neighborhood and hanging out with friends near the BART stop on 24th Street. “I was always on the street,” he said.

When he moved out of his family’s home, an event sparked by his brother’s murder in a drug deal, what he described as a series of falling wages, broken relationships, and unstable housing conditions began to rock him back and forth in the Bay Area and ended up pitching a tent in front of a church a block away.

“I started partying and stuff,” he said. “Starting cocaine and smoking weed.”

Mr Sanchez says he’s only got two formal leases for a few months each, and has seen enough wives and girlfriends in the process that he can’t say exactly how many of their names he tattooed and covered up.

“Bad call,” he said. “I have a heart for people.”

Mr. Sanchez jumped from rooms to floors and couches, saying he was functionally homeless even when he wasn’t on the street. At some point he moved to Sacramento, which is cheaper to rent, but had moved into landscaping and painting after his back injury, and that was only $ 10 an hour.

In early 2020, he slept on the floor of a friend’s hotel room and made about $ 1,000 a month in social security benefits and a little extra doing yard and gutter cleaning jobs every hour. One day he met a woman he knew and she offered to let him sleep in her tent next to an episcopal church one block from his children’s apartment. He said yes and soon got his own tent.

“I said, ‘Oh, is it like that? It’s not that bad, ”he said.

Homelessness, as experienced by Gregory Sanchez, is a relatively new phenomenon. In the early 1980s, scientists began documenting people sleeping in parks and bus stops. Then as now, researchers attributed this to a mix of falling wages, rising housing costs, and a frayed safety net associated with addiction and untreated mental illness.

Another factor that has largely been lost in history has been the loss of single occupancy hotels, which served as a crucial source of last resort housing. This has led the tenants to oppose Somerton’s conversion. When Mr Lembi asked the city for permission to renovate Somerton from residential to tourist hotel in 1984, it was challenged by Randy Shaw, a longtime housing attorney who founded the Tenderloin Housing Clinic in 1980 and still operates it today . He eventually negotiated an agreement that allowed the two dozen long-term residents to stay at the Hotel Diva.

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Health

American Airways strikes flight crews to DC airport lodges

American Airlines moves flight crews to DC airport hotels

An airline employee walks past empty American Airlines check-in terminals at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia on May 12, 2020.

Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | Getty Images

Airlines are moving flight crews to hotels outside of central Washington, DC to avoid protests in the U.S. Capitol, airlines and a major union said.

American Airlines began booking Washington overnight crews at airport hotels on Tuesday and plans to do so at least on Wednesday, said Curtis Blessing, an American Airlines spokesman.

United Airlines flight attendants will also stay at airport hotels this week, while Alaska Airlines flight attendants have been urged to avoid downtown Washington DC, said Taylor Garland, spokeswoman for the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, cabin crews at those airlines and more represents than a dozen others. The decisions were made before pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday afternoon.

United crews staying in Atlanta will also be staying at airport hotels this week.

The airlines had relocated crews from central Washington, DC, on election day in November because of concerns about demonstrations and possible logistical problems.