The guide is the result of a collaboration between 17 companies and municipalities in the Alentejo and Ribatejo regions and features 30 tourist products related to the agro-food, extractive, fashion, and textile industries.
During a presentation held at Lagar Casa Relvas in the Vidigueira municipality, Beja district, Maria Manuel Gantes, representing the Alentejo and Ribatejo Regional Tourism Entity (ERT do Alentejo e Ribatejo), announced that the book is available digitally in both Portuguese and English.
The “Industrial Tourism Guide” will later be available in physical format for partners and in Spanish as well.
Leonor Picão, coordinator of the offer enhancement direction at Turismo de Portugal, stated that the guide is “a swift, easy, and attractive way to promote and communicate” the existing industrial tourism in the region, detailing visits, schedules, duration, languages of accompaniment, the number of participants, and the type of activity for each asset.
“Therefore, being able to have all this information consolidated into a single source is of great importance and a milestone for the structuring of the industrial tourism product in this region,” she assured.
Maria Manuel Gantes highlighted the synergistic capability the product brings for the involved partners and tourists, as it allows them to “create joint programs.”
“A person doesn’t travel to the region just to visit one resource, but if we can create programs where they visit one resource in the morning and another in the afternoon, it enhances the ease and attractiveness,” she explained.
Commenting on the significance of the Aljustrel Mining Park as one of the route’s partners, its coordinator, Marcos Aguiar, assured that this “network work” is “essential” for the infrastructure to continue growing, and thus, “it makes perfect sense” to be included in the guide.
“The great challenge in tourism in Portugal, and in particular in tourism in the Alentejo and Ribatejo, is having an offer that keeps people in these territories, and this guide invites visitors to stay in the region as long as possible, enjoying the hotels, restaurants, and all the tourist offerings in the area,” he mentioned.
According to the Deputy Mayor of Mértola, representing the partnership with the Mértola Weaving Workshop Cooperative and the Mina de São Domingos – Fundação Serrão Martins, the guide assists the municipality in “entering a different scale” in the industrial area, initially on a regional level and then on a national and international scale.
“This is very important for gaining visibility for the territories and also for promoting ourselves as a whole, thereby being more competitive alongside other industrial tourism destinations nearby with varied offerings, such as Spain,” she said.
The Alentejo region includes industries from Marvão, Elvas, Ponte de Sor, Gavião, Portalegre, Campo Maior, Viana do Alentejo, Reguengos de Monsaraz, Vila Viçosa, Ferreira do Alentejo, Mértola, Beja, Vidigueira, Aljustrel, Santiago do Cacém, and Grândola, while the Lezíria do Tejo area is represented only by the municipality of Rio Maior.
