André Gomes, president of Algarve Tourism, spoke to Lusa news agency about the results of a meeting this week, in Lagoa, to assess the status of maritime-tourism activities in the Benagil Caves, and considered that the balance is positive, as was seen in the first summer with restrictions on access, in 2024, he said.

The person in charge explained that the meeting in question was promoted by the entity he manages and by the Portuguese Association of Congress, Tourist Entertainment and Events Companies (APECATE), with the participation of the captain of the port of Portimão and regional environmental and land-use planning entities, and precedes the publication of an edict that will only need to be revised to include some “adjustments” for 2024.

“Last year, we held this meeting to help the port captain draft the edict that came to regulate the activity of Benagil, starting last year. And this meeting, in essence, served to, once again, together with all the public entities and companies, therefore, the maritime-tourism operators, assess the result of this edict, of the measures that were planned […] and how effective they were”, he explained.

André Gomes said that, during the meeting, it was possible to verify the success and effectiveness of the established rules, which have allowed improvements in terms of both the experience of tourists and visits to the caves for maritime tourism operators.

For the president of Turismo do Algarve, the consultation work carried out was a “success from the point of view of regulating access to the Benagil cave”, located on the coast of the municipality of Lagoa, on the south coast of the district of Faro, and which, until the entry into force of the access restrictions, was visited without limits or rules, putting people’s safety and the environmental sustainability of the area at risk.

“We no longer have those occurrences that we had been having with too many boats, with boats mixing with non-motorized vehicles, such as kayaks, with people swimming, so, in fact, it was possible to see that, with the implementation of these [conditioning] measures, these situations have completely stopped happening”, he highlighted.

With the results achieved, “it is natural, normal and desirable” that the model applied to regulate visits to the Benagil caves be extended, “in a more generic way, to maritime tourism activities along the Algarve coast”, he said.

The measures to be adopted in the new notice to regulate access to the caves “will almost all remain the same”, compared to 2024, and only “very specific” changes will be made, in matters such as the “number of vessels that can remain inside the cave”, which was “reviewed” and “put into practice” in 2024, or the reduction in fines applied to individuals who commit infractions, which were expected to be an “astronomical” amount, he explained, without specifying how much.