Interview with Basilio Leandro Pereira de Oliveira, State Secretary for Tourism (SETUR)

Let's start with a brief introduction on tourism in Rondônia. What are the main attractions of the state?

First of all, I would like to highlight that we are in the Amazon region. According to Embratur’s statistics, the Brazilian Amazon region is a favorite touristic destination for 14% of foreign tourists that visit Brazil.

Our landscapes are as beautiful as the coastal Northeast regions of Brazil. What we have is a different beauty. Our main attraction is nature in its best shape: the virgin forest, a large biodiversity, our giant fish, our abundant fishing resources, our clean water, waterfalls, etc. All differentiate us from other touristic destinations in the world.

What kind of tourism will have the tendency to stand out in the next few years?

Ecotourism, of course.

The fishing tourism is already a kind of tourism that has more potential in Rondônia because our waters have a huge concentration of fish.

The observatory tourism is very strong because we have the largest diversity in terms of indigenous ethnic groups in the country – 43 indigenous ethnic groups, some of them unaltered - we have 5 indigenous villages ready to receive tourists.

Which are your greatest challenges in terms of touristic development?

We need touristic infrastructures. The government has been doing its job in terms of infrastructure like building roads wherever possible, but what we really need are businessmen who want to earn money; businessmen who want to invest and explore tourism in a sustainable way; exploring natural resources but preserving them.

We also need investors to place boats in the Amazon like, for example, from Porto Velho to Manaus. We still don’t have any investor who would like to explore the Madeira River. There is a company from Minas Gerais that already talked about it but until now this pearl remains unexplored.

We are actually exploring just 1% of the touristic potential in the region and there is still a lot left to be done.

What kind of investment opportunities are there for international investors?

The opportunities are mainly the observatory and the fishing tourism. A Minas Gerais company was the first touristic operator to settle here in Rondônia in November 2012: this company has a yacht hotel in the Guaporé River between the municipalities of Cabixi and Pimenteiras (a very beautiful region) with 36 touristic packages. Just on the inauguration day, 24 of these packages were sold, so this company will operate these 36 packages (translated into 36 weeks) during the year in the fishing tourism area. We can easily see the potential and the demand that exists for this kind of tourism just from the fact that 24 of these packages were sold in Belo Horizonte only.

Rondônia lacks tourism operators. We currently have no company selling Rondônia outside Brazil. As I said, the only existing operator operates in Minas Gerais and their packages for this year are already sold so they are already selling packages for 2014.

I have no doubt that in the US and European markets Rondônia as a touristic destination would have a huge success. That is at least what we felt during the trade fairs we attended in Berlin, Lisbon and Lima: we were very well received and our stand was one of the most visited ones.

Investors should definitely come to Rondônia to get to know its beauty and potential.

The World Cup will attract many international tourists. Why should these tourists choose Rondônia rather than other Brazilian states?

They should choose Rondônia as a destination for the reasons I mentioned above about the Amazon forest. In my opinion this region is one of the most beautiful places in the whole world.

I already visited 5 indigenous villages, I was listening to the sounds of the forest for one hour and it’s a wonderful feeling. We have here an indigenous village called Suruí whose cacique (chief) is one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Everything I would say about the Amazon forest would not be enough compared with the feelings that a tourist will get by visiting it.

For the World Cup, we are between 2 host cities and we have suggested our region to be a training center but due to the fact that Rondônia is in the Amazon region we know that many tourists will come here anyway.

I’m pretty sure that when the tourists go back to their countries they will have lots of stories to tell and they will definitely want to come back.