The Regional Director for Tourism revealed Thursday that the working group is being prepared for the promotion of tourism activities focused on cruises together with the entities responsible for the area of tourism in the Canaries, Cape Verde and Madeira.
 
Filipe Macedo spoke in the context of the 37th FITUR - International Tourism Fair taking place in Madrid.
 
"The goal is to promote joint work regarding the impact of cruises on ports of calls from a perspective of increasing gains from these calls, which is in the direct interest of cities and society in general. This will be achieved through the promotion of studies in tourism qualification, market studies and research of technologies applied to the sector," said Filipe Macedo.
 
The Regional Director said "the beginning of these contacts allow to assess the type of policies that should be adopted and agreed on among the islands of Macaronesia to promote tourism between the various Regions, with special emphasis on the eventual agreement on cruise tourism."
 
According to him, "it is important to note that our presence in this type of events is consistent with the effectiveness of promotion actions as they allow us to position the Azores destination in partnerships within major international organisations of the sector" as well as in working groups, also at transnational level. In this regard, the government official pointed out "those promoted by one of the four axes of the INTERREG programme", said Filipe Macedo.
 
The presence of the Regional Directorate for Tourism at FITUR was intended to provide institutional support to various Azorean private agents of the sector attending the event as well as to all those who are currently about to carry out investment decisions in the Azores by expanding of their activity in the Region.
 
The dynamics observed in the two-day fair already allows us to foresee, on the one hand, the qualification of the tourist destination by diversifying and increasing the supply of tourism products and services in the Azores and, on the other hand, the consolidation of the Spanish market as one of the most important tourism markets. In this context, there will be a flight connection, twice a week, between Barcelona and Ponta Delgada to be operated by Azores Airlines; it will add up to the flight connection from Madrid operated by Portugal Tours
 
One should recall that the investment on priority markets has been focused on the promotion of new flights and increase of already existing flight connections not only with countries such as Spain, but also with Germany, Canada, USA, France, Italy and the UK, as in accordance with the premises of PEMTA - Strategic Marketing Plan of the Azores.