THE Portuguese Trade and Tourism Office in London has been given an extra ú50,000 this year to raise the country’s profile in the conference market.
The increase takes the budget for conference and exhibition promotions to ú250,000.
Head of tourism Mario Ferreira said:”Our strategy is to showcase Portugal more as a conference destination. We will increase our presence at exhibitions and run familiarisation trips for organisers to see facilities first hand.”
As part of the push into the meetings market, the Algarve is to get separate conference facilities.
A pavillion from Lisbon’s Expo ’98 exhibition is being moved to the Algarve and will have meetings space for up to 6,000 people while a convention centre with capacity for 2,000 is to be built by 2001.
“We have a large amount of hotel capacity but are only now waking up to the real need for a conference infrastructure in the Algarve,” said Ferreira.