Yesterday, the Azores Local Accommodation Association (ALA) called for more significant investment in measures to mitigate seasonality in the region’s tourism, defending the need for advance planning.
“It is urgent to ensure a continuous flow of tourists throughout the year, but greater investment and advance planning are needed so that all the islands can benefit in a fair and balanced way, through a more careful distribution of tourist flows,” said the association’s president, João Pinheiro, in a press release.
Last week, Berta Cabral, the Regional Secretary for Tourism, Mobility, and Infrastructure, announced that the Azores tourism promotion operation for the 2024/2025 low season represents an investment of 2.5 million euros, with an increase of 7,826 seats planned on flights to the archipelago.
For the president of ALA, the measures announced are “a positive step towards creating stability in the sector”, but they may not be enough.


“ALA warns that these measures may have come too late for some companies, adding that the amount made available by the measures is insufficient to effectively combat the real challenges of seasonality,” said João Pinheiro.
The association highlighted the 14.9% year-on-year growth in overnight stays in local accommodation in the first eight months of the year, which exceeded the 1.28 million mark, claiming that it represents “a sustainable recovery and growing demand for Destination Azores.”
“This milestone reflects the solidity and continuous development of the sector, driven by tourists from abroad, who contributed 997,600 overnight stays (an increase of 16.4% compared to 2023), while domestic tourists generated 287,000 overnight stays (an increase of 9.8%),” stressed the president of the ALA.
João Pinheiro considered that the data, revealed on Tuesday by the Azores Regional Statistics Service, “further reinforces the importance of the LA sector for tourism in the Azores, since the capacity of traditional hotels alone would never be able to guarantee the total number of guests and overnight stays recorded in the Azores by the end of August.”
“This importance assumed by the LA is also reflected in the leverage of the Azorean economy, directly (income from each LA) and also indirectly, with all kinds of services that LA guests use (transportation, restaurants, tourist entertainment, etc.),” he stressed.


However, the president of the ALA warned of the need to step up inspections, pointing out that data from the SREA indicates that 12% of local accommodation establishments in the Azores “did not report any movement of guests” in August.
According to João Pinheiro, these figures may indicate that these establishments – 489 units and 2,773 beds – “are no longer on the market.”
“The ALA calls for the implementation of appropriate inspection measures by the competent authorities, in order to ensure that the sector’s figures in fact reflect the exact reality of LA in the Azores, not giving the wrong idea that there are establishments open and beds available, which have not received a single guest,” he stressed.
The ALA president highlighted the 4.9% rise in the average stay, which reached 3.8 nights in August, and the 3.7% growth in the number of guests, to 77,000 in the same month.
São Miguel, the archipelago’s largest island, continues to have the highest number of overnight stays in local accommodation, with 180,400 in August (61.6% of the total).
However, the ALA highlighted the “very significant growth” of other islands, such as Flores (35.4%), Terceira (20.1%), and Pico (11.3%), claiming that it proves “a more balanced growth between the different islands of the archipelago.”

In Diário dos Açores-Osvaldo Cabral-director

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