Tourism Sector in Espirito Santo: Exclusive Interview with State Secretary Alexandre Passos

Interview with Alexandre Passos, Espirito Santo’s Secretary of Tourism

Generally speaking, how do you see the tourism in Espírito Santo and what do you expect for the next years?

We are working hard to develop the tourism with entertainment in Espírito Santo. Traditionally, Espírito Santo receives many tourists during the summer, but our aim is to attract tourists that are looking for entertainment during the whole year, not just in summer time.

So we have some strategies, for instance to attract tourists that are looking for adventure. We are qualifying our companies, together with an institution called Abeta, which is a Brazilian association specialized in ecotourism and tourism for adventure. We want to certify our companies so they can receive tourists safely, with no risks to the tourists and offering quality of service.

We are also working with ecotourism, Espírito Santo is an amazingly beautiful state, so we need to widen this market, as we have lovely parks. We have the region of Caparaó, with the third highest mountain in the country, called Pico da Bandeira, so we are working together with Minas Gerais to make tourists products for the international and national markets.

We have a beautiful coast, which is already attracting tourists in the south of Espírito Santo for a long time. However, we need to work with the north, around Linhares, São Mateus e Conceição da Barra. We are working to develop more projects for entertainment, so the tourism industry of Espírito Santo will grow a lot.

We have regional airports and we are improving their quality. We are also improving our highways, for instance the BR 101 that will be administrated by a private company under the public supervision and the BR 262 that is going to be improved during this year. With it we can receive many tourists, especially from Minas Gerais. We are trying to find ways to broaden our market and attract people from São Paulo, Brasília, Goiás, Rio de Janeiro e Bahia, to work with these states and offer more options for tourists looking for entertainment.

Our state is also very famous for rural tourism, which we call “agroturismo”, in the Capixaba Mountains we have international standard hotels offering excellent service with the very best in gastronomy. I recently had a meeting with workers from this part of our state, in the Capixaba Mountains, in Pedra Azul, which is a wonderful place, and they told me they are receiving tourists at this time of year during business days, not only during the weekend. There are tourists coming from several parts of the country, from São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Bahia and even international tourists. These people are looking for our unique gastronomy and the beauty of our mountains.

We are also developing our business tourism industry, building new ports and several companies, which work with metallurgy, companies that are looking for everything this part of Brazil can offer them. So we are building many hotels to receive business tourists, improving our structure to receive these people, and they are coming to Espírito Santo because the state is growing.

At this moment we are working hard to create attractions for the tourists, building our brand new convention center to allow us to offer attractions for 15000 people, near our airport, with hotels, and a good structure, actually it will be a park with airport, hotels, the convention center, with several options to receive tourists. This is a big project, which we are developing together with Infraero, which is the Brazilian aviation company.

What kind of tourism will stand out in the next years, is there any niche, sector or area that can grow?

I think that in terms of tourism for entertainment, people looking for adventure, Espírito Santo has many things to offer if you are looking for adventure, there are many interesting things for people looking for radical sports, fishery or nautical tourism. Nowadays we have places in Espírito Santo offering rafting, paraglide flying, free flying, canoying, canopy and other sports for people that like adventure sports. So this area of tourism will develop very fast.

Another area is ecotourism, which is a tendency in our country. In Espírito Santo for instance we have many places, parks where tourists can see birds. There are people from other countries that are coming here, Chinese, Japanese and Americans that are coming to Espírito Santo to look for local birds in the parks. There are many birds, which only exist in Espírito Santo. Just the other day there was a bird that has not been seen for 20 years in Espírito Santo and 2 weeks ago some people saw it… So that sort of thing attracts tourists. The ecotourism, whale sighting… We believe it’s going to grow, so we work very hard to improve it. There is as well what we call contemplation tourism, where people can “feel” the nature and have a fantastic experience.

Also conventions, events, which is a sector we are working hard to improve. This year, our perspective according to the Convention Office is to grow 30% compared with last year.

In our airports, we gather information monthly and we can see an increasing of around 15-20% of people that are coming to Espírito Santo. It is a very important figure, in fact it’s the best growing average in Brazil.

So we are working hard, improving the structure for our convention center, the airport and other installations as we are preparing for the World Cup and the Olympic Games. We are creating a very good structure for countries to stay here while they are preparing to participate in these events. So I think these are the two important points for us to work with.

What are the main challenges for the development of tourism in Espírito Santo?

I think that the big challenge is infrastructure. While we are working to attract more tourists, we need to offer them a good infrastructure, so they can feel comfortable. We need to improve our highways so they can come and go, our local airports with a good structure, and also the airport in Vitória… We need to prepare it to receive more tourists, to have a track where the big planes can land. We have projects to improve the nautical tourism. We want to build a new passenger terminal for cruise ships. Another project involves the redevelopment of the waterway edge of the Guarapari, which is one of the cities that attracts more tourists in our state. We are working in several projects to give a better structure for the tourists, improving the coast structure, the channel, doing everything to offer them a better place to stay, to come and go. Whether they come by yacht, by ship, they need to feel comfortable.

We have projects to qualify the workers, we need to give courses for people who are working in hotels, pubs, restaurants… We are offering courses for 5000 professionals this year, so these workers will be prepared to welcome the tourists. It is important as well that the taxi drivers learn other languages, English, Spanish and French. But above all English and Spanish because we have many countries near Brazil where people speak Spanish, it’s very important that they can speak the language and help the tourists better. We are working hard to receive well the tourists in Espírito Santo.

And about the World Cup, as you said before, you are preparing to receive tourists, but what are going to be the implications of this event for Brazil and for Espírito Santo?

In Espírito Santo, we will not host any national team, we will not have matches in our state, but we are preparing our structure to receive national teams that will stay here before the World Cup. We presented to FIFA hotels and other installations, some of these places are being selected by FIFA so in the future the teams can choose them. We don’t know yet which teams will stay here, but we will have a very good structure to offer them. That is something we are doing, our sports secretary is working very hard so we can have a national team in Espírito Santo.

We are also working for the Olympic Games. There are already 9 places where the teams can stay and prepare for the games. We already received 2 countries that are choosing the place for their teams to prepare, one of them was a delegation from England that came here for a technical visit, and a delegation from Australia as well.

Espírito Santo is a very good option for the teams as we are surrounded by states where the matches will be plaid. We are near Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, Brasília and São Paulo. These states will have matches and we even joke that we are an island surrounded by the World Cup.

Thus we expect that people and teams that will play in the other states will come to Espírito Santo to enjoy all the things we have here. The matches will be in Minas Gerais, Bahia, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasília. Usually during a World Cup, people will travel a lot, by car, using the roads, that’s why we need to improve our highways, so people wont have problem while traveling. There are many things to be done, in our airports for instance, we need a better structure, as we are near so many states. It takes 40 minutes to fly from Rio de Janeiro to Espírito Santo, 40 minutes from Minas Gerais, 01:20 from São Paulo, the same distance from Brasília. About 2 hours from Salvador, but iIt is still very near. So that is a very important advantage, we can receive people from all over the world that will come for the Cup and the Olympic Games. Even if we are many years from the games we already are receiving delegations that want to know our state, to stay in Espírito Santo. We still cannot tell which countries will stay here, but we are already receiving inquiries.

People that go to Rio de Janeiro and visit Vitória can see many similar features, the climate and other things and that is very good for our state as it is a very good place for the teams to prepare for these events. And with the teams certainly will come the tourists, people supporting the teams, their friends and family. So that’s something we are working very hard to achieve.

What are the opportunities for international investors in the tourism sector?

Espírito Santo is one of the states that is registering the best figures when you look at the growth rates in the country. Economically we are growing a lot, building ports, for big ships, we have deep water which is very good, many companies that work with metallurgy, siderurgy, oil, gas and so many other sectors, are looking for our resources.

So we are growing above the national average, around 10%. We even say that we are a “Chinese” state, economically speaking. In our state we have oil, we are the second state in oil production and we have what is called “pré sal”, which will be the most important oil resource in the country.

Which is making our state stands out and grow very fast, with many hotels and a good gastronomy. Many hotel brands are looking for the state so that sector is developing a lot, offering quality for the people. There are many people that are coming to Espírito Santo, we are receiving new professionals all the time, people coming to work and to enjoy our state. These people want the very best, they want the best food, the best service, the best structure. Therefore, the tourists that will come to Espírito Santo will have the best we can offer, because we want to attract more people, we want to keep on with the growth rate we have now, to keep developing the state.

When you think about entertainment, we have many options. Espírito Santo is a lovely state with many possibilities. If people have the chance to know our mountains, everybody certainly will love them. You can compare them with many other places… I just traveled to Europe, to France and Switzerland, and their mountains, are very nice, very beautiful, but if you go to the mountains of Espírito Santo, if you see them you just can’t believe, they are wonderful, lovely. Our forests are preserved, the nature is just amazing, you have these very high mountains with 1700m, places with a very rich culture.

At the end of the 19th century, many German immigrants came to this part of Brazil. There were also many Italians that came to Espírito Santo to find a place to stay. So today, more than 50% of our population comes from Italian families. Many people came here, from Italy, Switzerland, Poland and several other cultures that exist only here, that came from other countries and now live here. There is a language that we call Pomerano, these are people that came from Germany, you don’t have it in Germany nowadays, only here in Espírito Santo and Santa Catarina. So these people still speak their dialect, they have a unique culture that is very important for our state.

So the tourists can visit Domingos Martins which is a German region, enjoy the food, the music, the culture… And 20 km from there they can find Venda Nova which is a region with Italian immigrants where you have the people speaking Italian, drinking Italian wine, eating Italian food, with Italian songs and a different culture. Not far from there, you can find the Polish immigrants, people living together and working together for our country.

In 40-50 minutes people can go from one place where the temperature is about 30 degrees to another where the temperature can often get between 11 degrees and even 0 degrees during the night. That is what the tourists will find in Espírito Santo and we want to give more people the chance to know our state and discover for themselves all the beauties of our state. We know that our beauties are not known as we want, but we are working very hard to show this to the world.