São Paulo – The Brazilian hotel industry is planning to invest R$ 12.8 billion (US$ 3.9 billion) in the next six years, according to data from a study done by the Brazilian Forum of Hotel Operators (FOHB) released this Monday (30th) in the Ministry of Tourism’s website.
According to the survey, investments will expand the number of budget hotels and the availability of rooms in cities with less than one million people. The survey indicates that, if investments are to be confirmed, there will be 630 new hotels in Brazil until 2020 and the number of rooms will jump from the current 94,000 to 164,000.
The study points out that there’s a trend that the new investments will raise the number of budget hotels and they will amount to 40% of the total in 2020. Besides, the paper says that new hotels will be built in smaller cities.
Currently, 59% of hotels are concentrated in cities with more than one million people and, in 2020, these cities will have only 47% of the total. At the same time, cities with less than 300,000 people will have approximately 30% of the hotels. Today, they only have 22% of the total.
Vinícius Lage, minister of Tourism, said that the investments will also generate positive results in other sectors of the economy, such as construction industry, and despite being spread out by the whole country, there’s a growing spending in the hotel industry in Rio de Janeiro, city that will host the 2016 Summer Olympics.
“There’s business for the construction industry, generation of jobs and re-qualification of the tourist industry. As highlight, we have strong investments in Rio de Janeiro due to the 2016 Summer Olympics”. Also according to the survey, there’s estimation for the tourism industry to create 100,000 jobs in 2020. Currently, the number is at 64,000.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
