World Cup Brazil 2014

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.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 26th, 2010 at 12:01 pm and is filed under travel.