At a ceremony held on 28 April at the facilities of the Alentejo Regional Coordination and Development Commission (CCDR), presided over by the Minister of Economy, Castro Almeida, contracts were signed for 12 of these projects, totalling an investment of approximately €6.9 million.

The projects highlighted today received a total of €3.9 million from Turismo de Portugal, through the Growing with Tourism Support Program, and are distributed across the North, Central, Lisbon, and Alentejo and Ribatejo regions, involving public, private, and associative entities.

Other tourism initiatives

In statements to journalists at the end of the ceremony, the president of Turismo de Portugal, Carlos Abade, recalled that these tourism initiatives join the other 10 contracts already signed earlier in a similar session held in Porto, “about a month and a half ago”.

“We are currently talking about a total of 22 approved investment projects; therefore, 12 today [28 April], 10 in Porto.” This involves “an investment already in the order of €17 million globally, of which seven million today, €10 million” in the other session, highlighted the same official.

After the Minister of Economy had already alluded in his speech at the ceremony that the overall allocation of the Growing with Tourism Support Program is €30 million, Carlos Abade explained to journalists that the 22 projects contracted so far involve “financial support that is already around €8.5 million”.

“This means that the program continues to receive applications so that they can be analyzed, their merit assessed, and then the respective contracts can be signed,” said the president of Turismo de Portugal, highlighting that the initiative “is very diverse” in the type of investments it supports and its application is “very broad from a territorial point of view.”

Project development

“The Growing with Tourism Program is mainly aimed at developing projects that can boost local economies, that can revitalise territories, with a clear preference for those territories that are low-density territories,” he argued.

And, the same official continued, “it addresses a concern that tourism has, which is to continuously value the territory, make it increasingly competitive, make it more resilient, more qualified, and then allow companies to develop their activity in a much more favourable context.”

Among the supported projects he exemplified are tourism initiatives associated with sports, nautical tourism, religious tourism, initiatives in the area of astronomy, interventions in museums, ecoways, viewpoints, and "an immensely large range" of areas that reflect the richness of the national territory.

Valuing the localities

Without giving statements to journalists, the Minister of Economy welcomed the signing of these 12 contracts at the ceremony as "another step" toward the realisation of a strategic vision that positions tourism as an essential vector of economic growth and a decisive instrument to promote the territorial balance of the country.

The Growing with Tourism Program, he stressed, aims to contribute to "valuing local realities that are waiting for human intervention to become a reality".

Among the 12 contracts signed, two are to be implemented in the North, six in the Central region, one resulting from a partnership between Central/Alentejo and Ribatejo, two will 'be born' in Alentejo and Ribatejo, and one is destined for Lisbon.