The concept behind the project is for 12 graduates to start a one-year internship during which they’ll have to develop ideas meant to bring new life to the Praia do Barril beach concessions as part of the overall goal of fighting seasonality. The idea is to offer new tourism products and services aiming toward the senior and disabled citizens.

The idea man behind the project is Antonia Almeida Pires, the general manager of the Pedras d’el Rei resort; he invited the University of the Algarve to provide some academic backup and some institutional credibility to the venture.

The hope is that the project will have a positive effect on the region’s tourism industry during the low inter season, because Barril is indeed of regeneration, so the idea is to aim the project at seniors, a much more demanding market.

The interns will be the hands-on part of the approach, while the backing entities will be offering a background network meant to facilitate contacts with other entities, funding opportunities and providing their important know-how to the effort.

Around 200 University of the Algarve graduates applied for the 12 positions, so the organizers had quite the pool to choose from, and they were looking for a wide variety of fields of expertise, ranging from landscaping and management to things like marine biology and architecture.

Considering the one-year time span of the internship, during this time the interns will be staying at the Pedras d’el Rei development for free, and will be receiving a monthly wage of around 700 Euros – it’s quite a decent deal for fresh graduates.

We’ll have to keep an eye on this project this following year and see what comes of it.

The momentum that he is referring to has to do with the fact that at least till the present time, the tourism numbers in the Algarve have been showing a positive and upward trend, and that he considers that this is reason enough for the Algarve to establish itself as an all year-round destination.

He appealed to businesses operating within the Algarve tourism industry to stay open for as long as possible because in his words, it is ‘essential’ to try and ‘keep facilities and infrastructures connected to tourism open’ during this coming winter; because that’s what is needed to start the process of reaching the goal of making the Algarve into a winter destination.

Silva continued to say that the Algarve tourism industry as a whole is working on the 2012/14 winter campaign and he said that the campaign has shown very positive results in securing about 100,000 nights to be spent in the region on top of all of those already contracted for this winter.

He stressed that the region has to affirm itself as a year-round destination and in order for this to happen, each and every public and private entity have to help create the conditions so as to reach this objective.

Mister Silva is quite uniquely experienced in the subject, having been mayor of Albufeira – one of the region’s major tourist hotspots – for a decade, and now being re-elected as the president of the RTA; he is quite aware of the seasonality aspect of the region and that’s why he is trying to change that.

We can only hope that he manages to do this for the overall good for everyone.

And it appears that starting with the month of June the Algarve and Seville started working together in order to promote each other as tourist destinations. This new cooperation being made possible by the signing of a protocol between the Algarve Tourism Board and the Diputacion Provincial de Sevilla – or Seville Country Council – on June 10.

According to Desiderio Silva – president of Algarve Toruism – the goal of the Algarve is to have a much greater visibility as a tourism destination in Spain. The idea of securing this protocol, which will be reciprocal in terms of promotion, is just one way of achieving this goal and allowing the Algarve tourism industry to materialize projects that value both the Algarvean and the Andalusian territories.

The ceremony to ratify the document took place in Faro on June 19.

This tourism alliance wants to make the Algarve one of the main travel choices for Spanish holidaymakers, hoping to, at the same time, enhance the Iberian destinations in the eyes of Algarvians through promoting the Spanish complementary tourism products throughout the year.

During the ratification ceremony, Desiderio Silva said that the protocol should also help to ‘increase the number of Spanish visitors in the south of Portugal, and of Portuguese visitors in the province of Seville’ a desired outcome that will prove to be very positive for hotels, restaurants, and all around for the businesses in both countries.

At the ceremony, the vice-president of the Diputacion Provincial de Sevilla – Maria Dolores – was also present, and she presented Seville as a destination for Algarve residents.

The study assessed 140 worldwide economies and took into consideration the competitiveness of these countries in regards to travel and tourism under the chosen theme of ‘Reducing barrier to economic growth and job creation’.

The report is meant to explore the potential and influence that the travel and tourism industries in general have in regards to a country’s economy and also takes into consideration the creation of jobs, which is essential for the proper development of any country.

So on this list of 140 countries, Portugal placed seventh, behind a couple of unexpected places such as Senegal – sixth – and Macedonia – fourth. The top three friendliest places are Iceland, New Zealand and Morocco.

The President of the Algarve Tourism Board, Desiderio Silva, stated that this favorable positioning of the entire country is thanks to the tourism industry’s approach to its visitors’ needs and requests. The Portuguese people being hospitable in general, but when helped by high quality products in all facets of tourism, coupled with the natural beauty, warm climate and unique gastronomy and culture of the country, it can only boost the way in which they’re perceived by foreigners.

We would like to add that all of the characteristics that we mentioned earlier are available in spades in the Algarve, which can be seen as a microcosm of everything that is great tourism-wise, about the country.

The study has also taken a series of other factors into account, such as the overall tourism infrastructure, economic, legal, environmental and cultural factors, as well as the tourism labor market.

Overall, the various indicators place Portugal in 20^th place when the other placements are taken into account.

A recent survey amongst local property agents has revealed that buying and selling of property during 2012 has shown some improvement when compared to the past couple of years. In fact, about seventy percent of the leading Algarve property agents who took part in the survey are of this opinion.

The 10-10-10 Survey – as it is called – contains ten key conclusion, and was a joint project between ILM Group and Property Lynx. The survey is carried out three times per year and its goal is to measure market confidence, performance and market trends – the next one for instance will be completed in May 2013 with its results becoming available in June.

The majority of participants reported the enquiries, offers and transactions and offered evidence of enquiries leading to complete purchases. For instance, 26 percent of enquiries for villas and luxury villas converted into 27% of sales, not a bad conversion percentage indeed.

Interestingly enough, the market is dominated by the top end and middle range, meaning that 27% of transactions were at more than one million euros – which is a 175 increase compared to 2011 – while transactions in the 100,000 to 500,000 euro bracket accounted for 51% of the market.

The survey also revealed that the overall market demand has been hindered by several motives such as pricing factors, lack of finance opportunities and unreliable banks, as well as general concerns in regards to the Euro’s stability.

Another major problem that the Algarve agents reported was the lack of support from the government and the regional and local authorities, as well as with the overall promotion of the region. They said that they cannot compete with other destinations when the focus of the region’s tourism industry stays on golf and the beach.

On the other hand, the survey does conclude that the regional agents, operator and developers are overall optimistic about 2013’s prospects, optimism that is propped up by the Portuguese government’s commitment to market the ‘Living in Portugal’ initiative.