The Algarve’s main hotel association highlighted the importance of the “human factor” in the regional hospitality sector, as well as its “crucial role” in “quality of services”.
It said there are “bottlenecks” resulting largely from “an ancestral lack of mobility between residential areas with the highest concentration of workers and their workplaces located outside urban areas”.
“At a time when councils are preparing to review their PDMs [Municipal land use plans], AHETA appeals to local authorities for the need to implement cost-effective, active housing policies with a view to stimulating and attracting labour workers from other parts of the country, but also immigrants from third countries”, the Algarve business association said in a statement.
AHETA highlighted too the “huge efforts and investments” that hotel facilities have made in “trying to fill these gaps” by offering “where possible, housing and other facilities to its workers”, but acknowledged that “they have not been sufficient to solve the huge structural gaps the region faces in this area.”
Therefore, the association considers it necessary to “establish partnerships between the public sector and the private sector” to “re-establish workers’ loyalty to tourism and business”, using “continuous training during the off-season” to “create stable and solid teams throughout the year”.
Such measures would make it possible to “improve the quality of the services provided and increase their levels of productivity and thus the profitability of businesses and regional and national tourist competitiveness”, the association added.