Pre-salt stimulates hotel sector in the Santos area
DCI 01/28/2009
With the recent discoveries of Petrobrás in the pre-salt layer, business tourism starts getting heated up in the Baixada Santista area, with the private initiative laying their eyes on the Business Plan of the State-owned Company, which foresees investing nearly US$ 98.8 billion in Santos Basin over the time until 2013. With that, the "Nova Baixada", a brand that is being worked on in order to advertise the Coast of the Atlantic Forest as a destination - which includes nine cities of the Metropolitan Region of the Baixada Santista area - experiences a movement contrary to the economic turbulence and sees the acceleration of the investments in hotels, business events and civil construction. Despite the actions of appreciation of the region in low season having begun three years ago, the push to accelerate the appearance of new undertakings has really happened this year. Alert to this scenario, hotel chains accelerated their units, such as the Portuguese of the Riviera Group, which erected a hotel that cost more than R$ 30 million (US$ 13 million) in Santos, while Accor Hospitality calculates for the end of this year the inauguration of a complex under the Mercure and Ibis brands, at nearly R$ 44 million (US$ 19 million). So as not to be behind, the traditional Grupo Atlântico, owner of the Atlântico Hotel, should invest R$ 10 million (US$ 4.3 million) in the expansion and improvements of the traditional building. Altogether, there will be another 1.3 thousand rooms, in new hotels that start operating after April this year, until 2012. A fourth project is underway, kept in absolute secret from investors. The corporate events sector in the Baixada area also follows the trend of improvement. "We have already noticed the activity will favor the holding of events related to the sector of oil and gas. In 2007, there was the first Santos Off-Shore, which may be repeated in the next years", analyzed Silvana Pompermayer, regional manager of the Brazilian Service of Support for Micro and Small Enterprises of São Paulo (Sebrae-SP), and also one of the executives that integrate the group of professionals that promote the Tourist Circuit of the Coast of the Atlantic Forest. Silvana explained that besides the strong inclination towards business tourism aimed at the oil and gas activities - which increased after the opening of the local business unit of Petrobrás and the circulation of the executives in the region -, another sector that presents opportunities for the holding of events is Health, followed by the series of products and sport activities. Until 2012, at least another eight new events, most of them in the health area, have already been confirmed.