PS/Azores raises concerns following a meeting with AHRESP, arguing that fewer flights, higher airfares and shortages of qualified workers are placing increasing pressure on tourism businesses and residents alike
For an island economy, distance is never merely geography. It is a cost, a timetable, an available seat on an aircraft; sometimes it is the difference between a hotel room occupied and one left empty, between a restaurant able to sustain employment through winter and one struggling to survive until another summer. In the Azores, where tourism has become one of the defining forces of economic transformation in recent decades, the question of how people reach the islands has therefore become inseparable from the larger question of what kind of tourism the archipelago can sustainably maintain.
Those concerns were at the center of a recent meeting between representatives of PS/Azores and the Azorean delegation of AHRESP, the Portuguese association representing the hotel, restaurant and related sectors. According to the Socialists, the discussion identified three closely connected pressures affecting tourism businesses: reduced air connectivity, increasingly expensive fares and a shortage of qualified workers. Together, they describe something larger than a difficult tourism season. They expose the particular fragility of an industry whose success on islands depends upon an intricate chain of access, affordability, labor, housing and seasonality.
PS/Azores deputy Carlos Silva placed particular emphasis on air connectivity and on the Regional Air Route Development Fund, approved by the Azorean Parliament in May as an urgent measure and published on June 18. Against the backdrop of Ryanair’s departure from the Azores in March, Silva argues that the absence, so far, of publicly known solutions becomes increasingly concerning as the archipelago approaches the lower tourism season.
“Ryanair left the Azores in March, and almost three months have passed since the Air Route Development Fund was approved,” Silva said. “With the low season approaching, it is concerning that no concrete solutions are known for strengthening the Region’s air connections.”
The statement is part of the political opposition’s criticism of the Regional Government and should be understood as such. Yet the underlying issue it identifies reaches well beyond partisan debate. Air transportation in the Azores performs two functions simultaneously: it sustains the tourism economy while also serving as essential mobility infrastructure for the people who live on the islands. A reduction in capacity or an increase in fares therefore travels through Azorean society in several directions at once. The visitor may decide that another destination is cheaper; the resident may postpone a trip to the mainland; the business owner may receive fewer customers; and the tourism worker may confront a less predictable employment season.
Silva argues that the issue requires direct intervention by the President of the Regional Government to accelerate procedures and negotiations intended to attract additional carriers, specifically mentioning the possible entry of EasyJet or the return of Ryanair. His central argument is that additional year-round capacity is needed to create greater competition and help stabilize fares. Whether and how those objectives can be achieved will depend upon negotiations and decisions still to be made, but the urgency expressed by the opposition reflects a broader anxiety increasingly present within the tourism sector: the Azores may remain highly attractive as a destination while becoming progressively less accessible to some of the travelers who wish to visit.
The national Portuguese market illustrates that concern particularly clearly. According to the figures cited by Silva, the Azores received 102,000 fewer arriving passengers during the first seven months of 2026 than during the equivalent period of the previous year, with declines recorded in every month. São Miguel alone accounted for a reduction exceeding 76,000 passengers, approximately 10 percent. Silva links part of the contraction in the domestic market to airfare prices, referring to tickets costing more than €700.
“We are losing tourists from the national market, which is one of our principal source markets,” he said. “When traveling to the Azores becomes more expensive, we lose competitiveness as a tourism destination, and we also penalize the mobility of Azoreans.”
That final distinction matters. The same airplane carries the tourist beginning a holiday and the Azorean traveling for medical care, university, business, family or simple participation in the wider life of the country. Tourism policy and mobility policy consequently overlap in ways that are particularly pronounced in an archipelago. An airfare that becomes prohibitive for a Portuguese family considering a week in the islands may also become prohibitive for an Azorean family wishing to travel in the opposite direction.
There is also a deeper contradiction hidden within the success of island tourism. Destinations invest considerable resources in persuading the world to desire them, but desire is economically meaningless if transportation cannot convert it into arrival. Landscapes cannot compensate for an unavailable flight. Marketing cannot create an airline seat. A destination may possess volcanic lakes, mountains, vineyards, historic cities, whale watching, trails and an increasingly sophisticated network of hotels and restaurants, yet the entire tourism economy still begins with the comparatively prosaic act of finding transportation at an acceptable price.
Silva consequently argues for attracting additional airlines capable of operating throughout the year, not merely during the most profitable summer months. “We need greater supply and more competitive prices to recover tourists, particularly from the national market, provide greater stability to the sector and improve mobility conditions for residents,” he said.
But airplanes constitute only one side of the present difficulty. Once visitors reach the islands, someone must receive them, cook for them, serve them, maintain the hotels, operate tourism businesses and provide the professional knowledge upon which a mature hospitality industry depends. Here another structural weakness emerges: the shortage of qualified labor.
According to Silva, that shortage is connected both to insufficient professional training and to the difficulty of attracting and retaining workers in the Azores. Housing enters the equation almost immediately. A region may need cooks, restaurant staff and other hospitality professionals, but recruiting them becomes considerably more difficult when workers cannot find accommodation at prices their salaries can sustain. The tourism economy thus encounters one of its most complicated internal tensions: an industry capable of increasing demand for housing can simultaneously find itself unable to recruit the workers it requires because housing has become too expensive.
Silva is particularly critical of what he describes as insufficient training opportunities in areas such as cooking and restaurant and bar service, especially given the existence of a regional hospitality training school. For him, an archipelago seeking to consolidate tourism as a major economic pillar must ensure that vocational education develops alongside the industry rather than behind it.
The question is not simply numerical. Tourism depends profoundly upon human skill. Hospitality, at its best, is one of those economic activities in which professionalism becomes almost invisible precisely when it is practiced well. The meal arrives correctly prepared; the room is ready; the visitor receives knowledgeable guidance; the restaurant operates efficiently; the encounter between guest and place feels natural. Behind that apparent ease are cooks, servers, managers, housekeepers, guides and technicians whose knowledge is acquired through education, experience and years of work.
A sustainable tourism strategy must therefore consider not merely how many visitors arrive but who will serve them, where those workers will live, what they will earn and whether they can imagine building a future in the islands. Otherwise, tourism risks becoming caught in a circular contradiction: businesses need more visitors to remain viable, but they also need enough qualified workers to serve those visitors; workers need adequate salaries and affordable housing, while businesses themselves confront rising operating costs and seasonal fluctuations in revenue.
This is why the present discussion about Azorean tourism increasingly appears to be about much more than tourism. Air connectivity leads to affordability. Affordability leads to demand. Demand affects business stability. Business stability affects employment. Employment leads inevitably to wages, training and housing. And all of these questions eventually arrive at the larger issue facing every island society: the ability to retain people.
The archipelago has spent years building its reputation as a destination. The next stage may prove more difficult because it concerns not image but structure. The challenge is to construct an economy capable of supporting the success that promotion has helped create while preventing that success from weakening the communities upon which the authenticity of the destination itself depends.
Carlos Silva summarized the opposition’s position by arguing that “it is not possible to have a robust, sustainable tourism sector capable of providing better working conditions without ensuring more air connections, more competitive prices, the capacity to attract and retain workers, and training opportunities suited to the needs of the market.”
Whatever political responses eventually emerge, the questions themselves will remain. The Azores cannot alter their Atlantic geography, nor should they wish to erase the insularity that gives the archipelago so much of its character. But insularity must be managed. Distance can be beauty and identity; it cannot be allowed to become permanent economic disadvantage.
Tourism begins with the promise of arrival. For the Azores, its sustainable future may depend increasingly upon something more demanding: ensuring that visitors can arrive, that residents can leave and return, that workers can afford to remain, and that the nine islands continue to be not merely destinations admired from afar, but living communities capable of sustaining the people who make them worth visiting.
Based on a Press Release. Photos from PS-Açores