The Angra Chamber of Commerce and Industry recently warned of the dangers of a small economy like the Azores becoming too dependent on tourism, calling for policies that aim to diversify and open it up to the outside world. According to the latest figures, the regional GDP grew last year above the national average due to tourism and a significant reduction in the weight of agriculture. We have already drawn attention to these issues in various ways, and they require deep and dispassionate reflection, but we admit that it is difficult to stop the tourism cycle when it is precisely tourism that is primarily responsible for the growth of regional GDP. However, we must be sensitive to development cycles marked by monocultures and what this leads to. First was the monoculture of the woad, then oranges, more recently cows, and now tourism. Betting all your chips on the same number may work, but it almost always comes to nothing. The reflection that urgently needs to be made about tourism is about where we are, what benefits we are bringing to the economy and at the cost of what resources we are sacrificing, what kind of tourism is sustainable and what wealth it is or isn’t creating. Basically, what sustainability are we talking about? We haven’t yet passed the stage of wanting quantity, believing that quantity alone makes a tourist destination recognizable, leaving specialization, which brings with it qualification, for another time. We don’t think we’ve yet managed to envision the moment when the first phase should end so that we can dedicate ourselves to the second. The reality is that investment in accommodation capacity continues to grow, and the big concern is the occupancy rate, which can only be achieved with more tourists, more flights, more of this, more of that… and the reality is that all of this has led to growth in GDP. Whether this growth means more wealth for the Azoreans is another matter, considering that the available data says the opposite, i.e., the poverty risk remains among the country’s highest. Small economies like ours, with 250,000 people and spread over nine territories, would be ill-advised to stick to monocultures, especially when their supply depends on foreign sources and factors we don’t control. That’s why diversification and specialization within that diversification is the best course of action, and even in tourism, there are already examples in the Azores that should serve as a standard. The focus should be on maximizing the quality of small businesses, whether in the production sector or in the provision of services. What is excellent has a market as long as it is intelligently promoted, which should be officially coordinated by those in the know.

Editorial from the newspaper Diário Insular for January 8, 1025. Armando Mendes (PhD), editor-in-chief, and José Lourenço director.

NOVIDADES will feature occasional opinion pieces from various leading thinkers and writers from the Azores to give the diaspora and those interested in the current Azores a sense of the significant opinions on some of the archipelago’s issues.

Translated to English as a community outreach program from the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) and the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department (MCLL).