Madeira News Blog

TODAY’S PHOTO : Thanks to yesterdays Diário de Notícias … This is Conceição Estudante, the Regional Secretary for Tourism and Transport (on and to Madeira), the focus of today’s blog.

source : Diário de Notícias 27/9/2008

Inspection is going to act to guarantee quality. Conceição Estudante has weighed up the results of the last year and is satisfied.  She is going to fight to improve the quality of tourism, and to better the remuneration of those who work in the tourism sector.

The regional secretary for Tourism and Transport, said in an interview given to the Diário, that from next month she will be launching inspections and supervisory activities to verify and guarantee the standards of quality in the tourism market. 

The initiative will be a joint operation between the regional directorates of Transports and Tourism to standardise some characteristics in the area of tourist transportation, to ensure that properly qualified people are being utilised, and that the quality in the delivery of the services is the key target. She believes that “when some companies utilize people that are not adequately prepared they run the risk of delivering incorrect information, not by bad intention, but because those persons are not qualified to give the correct information. There is not a lack of labour in the market, and we should think that the professionals should have, more and more, and better qualifications, more than in previous years when poor training proved to be a liability. For that to happen it is also necessary to change the rewards for employees in the tourism sector”.

“There is a value chain that should be rethought, that adequately balances the service that the tourism companies provide, particularly the standard of quality, and what the customer pays. We should qualify the service, and that has costs. In providing the necessary qualified and prepared personnel for the delivery of information, means that the revenues go up according to the quality of the product”. 

During the interview she also commented on several other areas:

Summarising on the events of this last year Conceição Estudante says:  “It was a year of experience with a new reality, a very intense year.  Looking back I see that what has happened has had a good return.  There are needs in the area of transport and in the area of tourism, the results have started to be favorable and positive, an indication that the work and the developing strategy were well demonstrated”. 

She considers that “all the expectation that was placed on air travel, through the introduction of new companies in the region has been achieved extremely favorably and the arrival of EasyJet from the United Kingdom, can consider itself a gamble that paid off very well. The numbers hit percentages of growth never achieved in the past”.  Regarding the liberalization of the route between Madeira and Portugal, she believes that the situation is consolidating itself, especially in the prices charged by the regular companies, feeling that in the future there will be a yet bigger scenario with the entrance of other airlines, some already announced, others on the way to formalizing an entrance.  She concludes from the progress so far “we are going to anticipate a second year that will be the consolidation of the delivery of the expectations that the first year achieved”. 

Another important question for the regional secretary concerned the privatization of the airports.  “It was announced about the privatization of ANA, the company that manages the airports and infrastructures on Madeira (ANAM), Portugal, and on the Azores, and that should be completed next year”.  On the eventual appearance of private companies interested in the management of the airports, she says “The airport of Madeira is the entrance of the Region, and, by that, the strategic interest must be safeguarded”.  The preferred option is a public-private partnership to guarantee and safeguard the strategic and public interests of Madeira, controlled with regulation, and allowing the government to intervene in the operation in defined circumstances. 

I have done my best to translate the interview accurately, and I am certain I have got the gist correct, but in the detail my interpretation could vary slightly from the quotes made. This is a shortened version of the complete interview.

Anyway the reason for focusing on this today, is that if they are going to do a quality audit/inspection of transport and tourism, how do they know where to focus? Have they actually asked anyone for opinions on what the problems are? It certainly doesn’t say so. What CE talks about mainly is that the guides and support staff are well trained to give the correct information, well who cares if Pico Ruivo loses a few metres as you drive by in a minibus, but I might care if that minibus runs over a stray dog that should be in care, and I know that is a regular source of complaint. 

As most of the blog readers are either tourists, or are seen as tourists who live here, don’t you think we would be giving Conceição Estudante a helping hand by telling here what problems foreigners really experience here, at such an opportune moment … such as those issues that often get coverage through the blog or the readers comments. I may not care if Pico Ruivo is ten metres shorter than the official height, but I do care if the taxi driver who tells me stitches me up for an extra €10 at the end of the trip. The long term impacts are that someone might not come here again, and they tell a friend, who tells a friend and so on. 

Anyway, here are the contact details for Conceição Estudante, all legally obtained and in the public domain. I believe she is a well balanced and hardworking politician, and puts her job before her politics, and will listen. Go on, send her an email, you know you ought to. By all means make if feedback rather than a whinge if that is more appealing to you. Also please tell anyone else you know who might have had an experience(s) that they didn’t like about this, and try and get them to write in also. You can also phone, as she does speak English as does her secretary.

Av. Arriaga, 18

9004-519 Funchal

Telephone : (00351) 291 211 900

Fax : (00351) 291 231 569

Email: srtt@gov-madeira.pt

Back to a normal blog tomorrow.

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