World Cup Brazil 2014

The Ministry of Tourism in Brazil is still in the process of re-creating the Classification System of Means of Accommodation. Meanwhile, it is not easy for potential guests to find an unbiased evaluation of hotels in Brazil.

Veja, the most influential Brazilian magazine, published some time ago a guide of best hotels in Brazil; the guide sorts hotels by city and event (such as “the best hotel for the Sao Paulo Fashion Week in Sao Paulo“), and is still a good indicator of the finest hotels in Brazil.

In Sao Paulo: Hotel Unique (photo below),  Sofitel, Transamerica, Grande Hotel Senac. See other hotels in Sao Paulo.

In Rio de Janeiro: Le Meridien, Sheraton, Pousada Pardieiro. See other hotels in Rio de Janeiro.

In Santa Catarina: Plaza Blumenau. See other hotels in Florianopolis.

In Salvador: Bahia Othon. See other hotels in Salvador.

In Curitiba: Mabu Royal and Premium Hotel. See other hotels in Curitiba.

In Brasilia: Melia. See other hotels in Brasilia.

In Recife: Atlante Plaza. See other hotels in Recife.

In Natal: Serhs (photo below). See other hotels in Natal.

In Fortaleza: Bluetree. See other hotels in Fortaleza.

In and near Manaus: Tropical, Amazon River, Crowne Plaza. See other hotels in Manaus.

Read also: best hotels in Brazil.

FIFA, CBF and the Brazilian Government have manifested preoccupation with airports and stadiums, but there is another point which deserves concern: hotels.

Brazil never saw Tourism as a priority.

The board below, extracted from a report by the Brazilian Travel Authority (which, in turn, was compiled based on information provided by the World Tourism Organization), shows the participation of Brazil in international tourism in the World and in South America.

According to the board, in 2007 (most recent data produced by BrazilTour), out of more than 900 million travelers who took international trips, only 19 million came to South America, and just a measly 5 million came to Brazil.

That means that Brazil has a share of about 0.56% (that is less than one percent) of total international tourism. And the board shows that that figure hasn’t been changing much in recent years.

Of course, this has repercussions in the hotel sector, both in quantity and quality.

It is uncertain whether the current hotel infrastructure will be capable of handling all the flux of tourists in 2014.

FIFA requires that each host city have a minimum number of hotel rooms, in proportion to the capacity of the respective stadium; several new hotels are being built, but it is up to private entities to assess the risks and determine how many unities will be built.

Belo Horizonte and Brasilia aspire to hosting the opening match of the Cup, but one serious restriction they face is their limited availability of hotel rooms. In Rio de Janeiro, where the final match of the Cup will be staged, cruisers will be used as hotel rooms.

An then there is the quality of services. Staff of most hotels don’t speak any language other than Portuguese; recently, the Government launched a programme called Ola, Turista (Hi, Tourist), to teach, using the internet, tourism workers (hotel and restaurant staff, taxi drivers, etc) to speak English and Spanish.

Brazil have several resorts and upscale hotels all around the country (in Brazil, the Travel Authority used to award Stars to evaluate hotels, but the concept was abandoned long ago – so, all Five Star Hotels in Brazil are self-attributed honours), but those have been serving a limited number of visitors. In case a large number of customers demanding high quality services come to Brazil (it must be remembered that these customers will have to dispute with the National Teams), there can be shortage of rooms.

After the Final of the 2010 Fifa World Cup in South Africa, more and more people will be interested in the World Cup 2014.

Below, a brief report of the current situation.

Full schedule of the World Cup 2014 wasn’t released yet. It is known, however, that the matches will happen between mid-June and mid-July of 2014.

The official logo was already presented, but neither the mascot nor other symbols were. Several promotional movies inviting visitors are ready to go – the first one being displayed right after the final match in 2010.

It will be winter in Brazil, but temperatures will be much more pleasant than in South Africa. It is likely that matches will be played, in local time, at mid-morning (around 10 am), short afternoon (around 1 pm) and late afternoon (around 5 pm); that will allow audiences in North America and Europe to watch the games at comfortable times (not sooner than 6 am in Western North America, not later than 10 pm in Eastern Europe).

Tickets are not for sale yet. FIFA already said that there will be big changes from the system adopted in South Africa, so as to make tickets cheaper and easier to be bought.

It is likely that there will be jobs and volunteering opportunities for the World Cup, but there is no further information yet.

Since May 2009, the host cities have been known. To meet interests of FIFA, the Brazilian Confederation and the Brazilian politicians, it was defined that there will be matches in twelve cites (there are doubts if those many are indeed the most recommended).

There will be also twelve stadiums; nine of them are publicly owned, and three are private property. None of the stadiums is ready; a few will be built from stratch, most will be fully overhauled.

Work in all stadiums is delayed. FIFA already manifested preoccupation with the delays. Public stadiums have to deal with a lot of bureaucracy; private stadiums have troubles finding money. This blog keeps track of the works in the stadiums.

Despite claims in contrary by the authorities, the infrastructure works are already delayed. According to several reports, Brazilian airports are not ready to cope with the expected flux of passengers in 2014 (600,000 foreign visitors and 3,000,000 of Brazilians). Recently, the Federal Government passed a law to speed up the works in airports.

The bullet train between Rio and Sao Paulo will not be ready for 2014. Oi Telecom was contracted to provide telecom infrastructure. Very little else has been done regarding infrastructure.

The vuvuzelas were prohibited in Brazil (ops, that was just a wishing).

The graph below shows the recent increase in accesses to this site.

For the World Cup 2010, FIFA partnered with some travel agencies to offer travel packages to South Africa; by buying packages with these agencies, visitors could rest assured that they would have accommodation and tickets to watch matches.

However, Brazilian visitors have reported that these FIFA travel packages lack flexibility.

All visitors who bough packages in Brazilian agencies were accommodated in only two cities: Durban and Cape Town; according to the managers of the travel agencies, these cities were chosen because they offer the better infrastructure, and also have other attractions to entertain tourists in between the games.

The problem, however, is that  to attend the games in Johannesburg, the tourists had to take a 24 hour trip.

This problem could be repeated in Brazil in 2014. Tour operators will probably try to accommodate visitors in cities with a good supply of hotels and with easy connectivity to the other host cities.

So, it is likely that most customers of these packages will stay in the cities of Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro (these two cities are by far the ones with most hotel rooms) and Brasilia (not so many rooms, but plenty of air flights connections).

For those who are planning to travel around Brazil during the Cup, or just want to stay closer to their teams, it is recommended to shop around; buying air tickets and booking hotels directly with tour operators (rather than buying a closed package) will probably be cheaper and will allow a more flexible schedule.

The Brazilian coast is nearly 8,000 km (5,000 miles) long, the best part of which in the tropical zone; several Brazilian capitals are located by the sea. The country seems to have potential to be a popular destination of cruises.

However, by visiting the sites of the biggest and most popular cruise operators, such as Royal Caribbean, Carnival Lines,  Princess and Norwegian,  one notices that there are few options, if any at all, of cruises to Brazil.

There are a few explanations for such. The most important reason is that, until 1995, only national flag ships could sail between Brazilian ports. Until then, most international cruise operators stayed away from Brazil; the only company which registered ships in Brazil was Italian Costa Cruises, which dominated the Brazilian market for decades.

Since 1995, other cruisers have slowly started to come to Brazil, but they face two big problems: Brazilians (except for a small elite) are not used to cruises, and the ports are not prepared to receive big crowds.

This situation, however, is likely to change until 2014.

The main reason is that cruises will be used as accommodation. Hotels are being built, but not in enough numbers to accommodate all visitors during the peak moments of the World Cup. In big events such as Carnival and New Year in Rio, it is already common to see tourists staying in cruisers, instead of hotels.

Besides, it is expected that, with the massive exposition of Brazil in the media, tourists will be more interested in destinations such as Fernando de Noronha, Natal, Fortaleza and others, and the operators will start to offer more packages to Brazil.

In a meeting with the Local Committee, the city of Belo Horizonte presented officially a claim to host the opening match of the World Cup 2014; representatives of the city (including the Mayor) produced a document with 54 projects, covering infrastructure, urban mobility, tourism and hotels, marketing and communication, public utilities and FIFA requirements.

According to city’s representatives, the main concern of FIFA is Mineirao stadium. FIFA wants the stadium of the opening match to fit as many viewers as possible, as well as 7 thousand journalists. After Mineirao is refurbished, it should fit about 70,000 attendants.

Some say that Belo Horizonte won’t have hotel beds to accommodate visitors, but the city disagrees; representatives confirm that Belo Horizonte lacks high standard hotels, but this isn’t too big a problem either (15 new hotels are being built, some of them of  ”very high standards”).

According to them, based on statistics from past Cups, the city of the opening match should have a number of beds around 40% of the stadium capacity; Belo Horizonte has today 34,000 beds in a radius of 100 km (60 miles) from the stadium, which should be enough.

The State is planning investments in the international airport of Confins, which should increase capacity from current 5 million to more than 10 million passengers per year in 2014.  At the same time, the airport of Pampulha, five minutes drive from Mineirao, will also be refurbished, and will be used by private and corporate jets.

Other cities are also interested in staging the opening match. The strongest candidates, besides Belo Horizonte, are Sao Paulo, Brasilia and Porto Alegre.

The Minister of Sports of Brazil presented yesterday the results of a study conducted by the Brazilian Governments about the impacts of the World Cup 2014 in the Brazilian Economy.

According to the study, from 2010 until 2019, the World Cup 2014 will aggregate R$ 183.2 billion to the Economy; at today’s rate of US$ 1 = R$ 1.75, or € 1 = R$ 2.33, that amount equals approximately US$ 105 billion or € 79 billion. According to IBGE, the official Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics, the Gross Domestic Product of Brazil in 2008 was about R$ 2.9 trillion, which means that the World Cup may bring an increase of about 6% to the Economy.

Still according to the study, the impact on the Economy will be more relevant in Brazil than it was in the Cups of France, Germany and South Africa.

Always according to the study, “direct investments will be of R$ 47.5 billion, to be invested in infrastructure, tourism and consumers expenditure; the balance, R$ 135.7 billion, will be of indirect investments, derived from the recirculation of money during the event.”

In infrastructure alone, total expenditure will be R$ 33 billion, 78% of which will come from the public sectors. An amount of R$ 5.7 billion will be invested in stadia, R$ 11.6 billion in urban mobility and R$ 5.5 billion in ports and airports. Other areas which will get a share of the investments: telecommunications, energy, health, tourism.

Tourism alone will aggregate R$ 9.4 billion to the Brazilian economy. During the World Cup, Brazil expects to receive 600,000 foreign tourists, and other 3.1 million Brazilians should also travel within the country.

The World Cup should create 710,000 jobs (330,000 permanent and 380,000 temporary jobs). Permanent payrolls will increase by R$ 6.8 billion, and temporary payrolls by 1.6 billion; this will cause an increase of more than R$ 5 billion in expenditures of the Brazilian families.

From 2010 to 2014, tax collection should increase by R$ 17 billion; according to the Government, this is 33 times bigger than the US$ 500 million in tax exemptions claimed by FIFA.

“The impact in the Gross National Product will be of R$ 135 billion, until 2019. This happens because investments, consumption and tourism continue, even after the World Cup.”

Today, April 21st 2010, Brasilia is celebrating its 50th anniversary; Brasilia was designed and built to be the Federal capital of Brazil.

Brasilia is one of the host cities of the World Cup 2014, and not an ordinary one. Given that the final match of the Cup will be in Maracanã, Brasilia is disputing with other major cities (like Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte) the privilege to host the opening match, or, at least, one of the semifinals.

And that was not very difficult to happen. The Government of Brasilia is planning to build the second largest stadium for 2014, the National Stadium, with a capacity of 71,000 people; meanwhile, Morumbi, the stadium in Sao Paulo, is having trouble to adapt to FIFA’s demands (last week, FIFA, instead of ruling out final matches in Morumbi,  euphemistically said that the stadium is ready to host Group Games of the Cup). Besides, there is a strong political interest to put Brasilia under the spotlights during the Cup.

What  can a traveler do in Brasilia?

Firstly, it is worth noticing that, thanks to the central position, the airport of Brasilia is one of the main hubs in Brazil; many flights connecting the South, North and Northeast of Brazil stop over in Brasilia. This means that will be rather easy to go to Brasilia and from there to any other host city.

Most Seats of Power in Brasilia are open to visitation. Within a mile walk around Three Powers Square, one can visit the Brazilian Congress, the Presidential Palace and the Supreme Court; several Ministries (such as the Foreign Relations and the Justice) are also open. Oscar Niemeyer, the architect who designed most buildings in Brasilia, scattered monuments all over the city, most of which are in open air or open to visitation (the National Theater, the Cathedral, the National Museum, JK Memorial).

Brasilia was designed with quality of life in mind. Residences and services are laid out orderly, to make transit and daily life easier. Being the city with the highest average income in Brazil, Brasilia has certainly sereral shopping centers and a busy nightlife. There are several environment friendly areas (the Parque da Cidade and the Lago Paranoá are the most outstanding examples). Climbing the TV Tower is the best way to have an overview of Brasilia landscape.

Brasilia has a very strong spiritual side (not to be confused with religious side). Many believe that Brasilia is the realization of a prophecy by Italian priest Dom Bosco, who dreamt of a new Canaan in the Tropics; Dom Bosco followers have several sanctuaries in Brasilia. Good Will Legion, one the largest philantropic institutions in Brazil, has headquarters in Brasilia, with several worshiping places; the Good Will Temple was built under a pyramid which is said be mystic. Visiting Brasilia is a good way to recharge one’s spiritual forces.

And then there are places to see in the neighbourhood. Brasilia is entirely surrounded by the State of Goiás, which maintains traditions of the old country side cities. The old city of Goiás is a World Heritage Site. Pirenopolis is well known for the waterfalls, colonial architecture and traditional feasts with roots in Colonial times. And several cities around Brasilia offer trips to know the Cerrado, one of the Brazilian biomas.

Brasilia doesn’t have the beaches of the Northeast of Brazil, the grandness of Sao Paulo, the cultural diversity of the South; however, there are attractions to keep a visitor busy for several days.

Anyone who stays in the Copacabana Palace in Rio or the Hilton in São Paulo knows that those are five star hotels. But how about the other less known hotels?

Today, there are not official standards to rank hotels by quality of services, comfort levels, prices, etc. Classifications mentioned by the hotels or travel agencies are usually self-attributed.

The Minister of Tourism has just announced a project to establish norms and standards for the hotels in Brazil. Among the actions of the project, are included: creation of a reference hotel, against which other hotels may be compared; creation of a seal of quality; creation of a matrix of references, which shall be used to categorize hotels.

This matrix will separate hotels in classes (resorts, inns, ranch hotels, jungle hotels, historic, urban, bed and breakfast) and categories, (from one to five stars). The classification and categorization, as well as the issuing of seals of quality, will be made by Inmetro, the Brazilian Institute of Weights and Measures (see notice).

The General Law of Tourism, passed in 2008, already provided for a kind of standardization of tourism services. Among other measures, the law determined that all travel related establishments should be profiled and classified by the Government.

So far, little of the law was implemented though. It is the expected influx of (demanding) international tourists during the World Cup 2014 which is moving the Brazilian government to improve the quality of hotels in Brazil.

Rio de Janeiro is one of the host cities of the World Cup 2014; the schedule of matches wasn’t announced yet, but it is very likely that Maracanã, the largest stadium in Rio, be chosen as the stage for the final match of the Cup.

Rio de Janeiro, or Rio (the name means River of January), is the city in Brazil most known abroad (São Paulo receives more foreign visitors than any other city in Brazil, but most visitors come for business purposes, rather than tourism).

There a few reasons to explain this fame of Rio. First off, Rio was capital of Brazil from 1763 until 1960 (before Rio, Salvador was the capital; after Rio, Brasilia became capital); over nearly two centuries, Rio was the economic, cultural, administrative and diplomatic center of Brazil, attracting most of the international visitors who came to the country.

And going back home, these visitors had a lot to say about the wonders of Rio. The city has a natural scenery which few, if any, other cities in the world can match: tepid beaches with white sand (Copacabana and Ipanema being the most famous), a tranquil bay (Guanabara Bay), a placid lagoon (Rodrigo de Freitas), rocky peaks (Corcovado and Pão de Açúcar being the most known), preserved forests (Tijuca).

And all of this is framed by tropical weather, with sun and mild temperatures all year round, and a constant breeze blowing from the sea. Very few cities in the world can afford a view as beautiful as seen below, from behind the Christ statue, at the top of Corcovado (photo by the Brazilian Travel Authority):

On top of the natural wonders, there are the  wonderful people. Of course, in Rio there is poverty, violence, pollution. The cariocas (as people from the city of Rio are called) were considered the friendliest people in the world a few years ago; and more recently the city was elected the top Gay destination in the world – not a surprise for all who visited Rio and knew the high tolerance of cariocas towards any diversity: sexual, religious, ethnic, etc.

People in Rio enjoy life. The teams in the State are not the ones with most  winnings, but the fans in Rio are the most passionate in Brazil. No other city in Brazil has beaches as lively as those in Rio. New Year Celebration in Rio is probably one of the best in the world; why would somebody wait four hours in New York, under a freezing cold, to watch a ball coming down, when they can have a party like this?

And we didn’t even start to talk about the Carnival in Rio, which is simply dubbed as the Greatest Show on Earth.

Of course, this combination of cultural heritage, nice environment and friendly people created, over the years, a touristic infrastructure which ranks among the best in Brazil: hotels, restaurants, museums, city tours, theatres, travel agencies, and anything else a visitor may need, are always at hand. A good source of information is Rio official site.