Thu, Jan 02, 2003 page11

• Brazilian resort tries to attract more foreign tourists

  Only 15 percent of Costa Do Sauipe's guests are foreigners, well short of the 50 percent forecast by 2005. The country should have been one of the world's hottest destinations after Sept. 11, but it never happened

  • By Tony Smith / NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
  • • 
    • 
    • 

  It's Sunday morning and the breakfast buffet at the Sofitel Suites -- one of five international hotels at this luxury 420-acre coastal resort -- is full of Brazilian families, all eagerly scooping scrambled eggs onto golden brown toast.

  Just hours later, at lunchtime, the restaurant is empty. Most of the families have headed home, leaving the hotel -- and most of the resort on the sun-drenched Bahian coast, some 80km north of the state capital, Salvador -- to the handful of guests who are staying longer than a weekend.

  To a tourist, that might sound like paradise: Imagine having Sauipe's 15 restaurants, 18-hole golf course, riding, sailing and surfing spots, exotic mangrove gardens and miles of empty beaches all to yourself.

  

  Brazil ranks only 20th among the world's most popular destinations. Despite the slump in global tourism after the Sept. 11 attacks, Brazil, by rights, should have been one of the world's hottest destinations last year. A resort at Costa Do Sauipe in Brazil has trouble getting enough tourists to fill vacancies.

  PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE

  But for Thomas Humpert, president of Sauipe SA, the company that must fill the beds at the two-year-old resort, it is far from heaven.

  "For 2002, we will probably have a 41 percent occupancy rate," he said. "Obviously that's not what we would ideally like."

  Worse still, only 15 percent of guests are foreigners, well off the 50 percent forecast by 2005 in the resort's initial business plan, which had the local media hailing Sauipe as Brazil's Cancun, a resort that would bring millions of tourist dollars to Bahia.

  In many ways, Sauipe reflects the problems faced by Brazil's tourism industry as a whole. Serious investments have been made -- US$200 million by the Marriott Group, Accor of France and SuperClubs of Jamaica -- in the Bahian resort, and US$6 billion over all in the last eight years, yet occupancy rates are way below their potential. Brazil still ranks only 20th among the world's most popular destinations.

  Despite the slump in global tourism after the Sept. 11 attacks, Brazil, by rights, should have been one of the world's hottest destinations this year, said Xavier Veciana, general director of SuperClubs here.

  With the currency, the real, off more than 30 percent against the dollar this year, a night at Sauipe's luxurious Sofitel can be cheaper than a London bed and breakfast, and two of Brazil's rivals -- Southeast Asia and Africa -- have both been hit by terrorist attacks recently, in Bali and Kenya.

  By comparison, laid-back Bahia looks positively safe.

  The problem is there are few direct flights to beach destinations here, crisis-hit tour operators are reluctant to risk new charter routes, and Brazil, in general, spends little abroad on promoting its coastline, historic cities and vibrant culture.

  "Now, just when Bahia has its best chance to attract more foreign tourists, airlines and tour operators are in the deepest crisis they have seen for years," Veciana said. "If the global economic situation were better, we'd have airlines and charter companies waiting in line at the airport here begging for slots."

  Brazil's tropical northeast coast, potentially the country's most valuable tourist asset, is starved of scheduled international flights. Only TAP-Air Portugal and Brazil's troubled carrier, Varig, fly from outside Brazil directly to the regional capitals of Salvador, Recife and Natal.

  "We have an airlift problem to Brazil in general and to Salvador in particular," said Eduardo Farina of the Bahian Entertainment, Culture and Tourism Cluster, a business association uniting 14 companies and institutions involved in the local tourism sector.

  "All the airlines are concentrating their flights in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, because they can make more profit from business travelers," he said.

  Not that Farina has anything against squeezing more profit out of tourists. That is exactly what the Cluster hopes to do, by improving infrastructure, training and diversifying what Bahia has to offer visitors.

  "The main idea is to raise the quality and level of tourism here -- to show that Bahia is not just beach and sun," Farina said. "Visitors who come here to enjoy cultural, nature and sport tourism tend to stay longer and spend more money."

  Strapped for cash, Brazil's government is slashing spending on tourism promotion.

  While President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has promised to give the tourism industry its own ministry, the Cluster is not waiting for government help.

  It plans an international campaign for Bahia in 2003, and Costa do Sauipe itself has contracted THR, the agency behind Spain's acclaimed strategic marketing for tourism, to pinpoint its best international markets.

  "Bahia is going to communicate aggressively all its products to specific target markets for the first time ever," Veciana said. "We hope it will bear fruit soon."

  So far, Bahia's experience in marketing itself has been restricted to small but lucrative niches, like blacks, mainly from the American Northeast, keen to learn more about their ethnic roots in a place closer to home and more familiar than Africa.

  Luciane Leite, international marketing director for state tour operator, Bahiatursa, estimates that 60 percent of the 45,000 Americans visiting Bahia this year would be black.

  Bahia's population is largely descended from slaves brought to work on sugar plantations from Mozambique, Angola and West Africa. Ceremonies mixing African rites with Catholic tradition, like the Feast of the Good Death in Cachoeira, a Baroque town outside Salvador, are performed regularly, attracting increasing numbers of tourists.

  "They're looking for a bit of Africa here in the culture, the music, the religious traditions, many of which have died out in Africa but survived here," said Paula Santos, an ethnologist and tour guide for Tatur, a Salvador operator that caters to black tourists.

  "In Bahia you have a fantastic product," said Adam Carter, managing director of Brazil Nuts, a Florida-based operator, who sees huge potential in the black market. "Salvador is easily branded as the most African city on the Western hemisphere, or the New Orleans of Brazil."

  Blacks can be reached best by radio and specialty magazines like Essence, and through church communities, he said, though he added that Bahia so far has only used small-scale "guerrilla marketing tactics."

  "This is a market that's in its infancy," he said. "Even if you say only 5 percent of the US population could be interested in such trips, it's a market of millions."
• Most Popular

  • 1

    Bukele proposes prisoner swap with Maduro

  • 2

    HK, Macau residency rules tightened

  • 3

    Mexican baseball’s growth starting to rival soccer clubs

  • 4

    New missile system to be used in US-Philippines Balikatan joint exercise

  • 5

    KMT officials to be questioned for illegal assembly