“At this point, what we know and can already say is that about 60% of the hotels had direct cancellations for the next two to three months and that 40% of these cancellations asked for refunds of the payments already made”, quantified Elidérico Viegas.

Speaking to Lusa, the president of the Association of Hotels and Tourist Enterprises of the Algarve (AHETA) said that these values ??are being the target of “survey on a permanent basis with hotels” and may compromise the activity for Easter and for the next high season.

In this sense, he defended the need to adopt measures to attract visitors from the national and Spanish markets, to compensate for the losses resulting from these cancellations, namely, the “abolition of tolls” on Via do Infante (A22).

“Abolishing the tolls on Via do Infante is a way to offset the losses resulting from direct cancellations and boost tourism from Spain to here, but also the domestic market itself”, he said, recalling that these markets can reach the region in private and without the risk of contagion on flights or airports, based on cancellations already registered.

According to Elidérico Viegas, “there have not been any cases” of contagion in Algarve hotels, however, he warned that it is necessary for health authorities to provide hotels and enterprises with manuals with the procedures they must adopt in case any case arises within the units of accommodation.

"The only problem we have here is that the official and responsible entities in this area of ??health continue without providing hotels and accommodation with procedures manuals to know how to act in suspected cases of infected people", he criticized.

This information "has not arrived yet and should have arrived already" and "common sense advised" that official entities should provide information and create telephone hotlines for tourists and hotels, to know "what procedures to adopt".

The same source clarified that "hotels, although they are not obliged to return the money, have reimbursed customers", stressing that "the events that were planned for the near future have all been either canceled or transferred to the end of the year", or to after summer.

“More worrying for us, at the moment, is the decrease in reservations for the tourist season, that is, we are in a situation where reservations are falling, not because of hotels, but because of travelers' fear of contagions in air travel and airports, ”he argued.

Elidérico Viegas considered that the outbreak caused by the new coronavirus is having “an evolutionary process that changes at all times”, being necessary to give “more strength” to tourism “both domestic and Spanish”, due ”to the proximity until Easter and the fear that people will not travel ”.