Azores Situation Report Wednesday 7th February 2024
Reduction in Ryanair flights impacted the business of tourist companies.
CCIPD survey of businesspeople reveals that 46% declare that turnover in January 2024 was lower than the same period last year.
The reduction in the number of seats for Ryanair impacted the sales volume of Oriental Group companies, with business people revealing a reduction in business of around 46% in January 2024, when compared to the same period last year.
This is one of the conclusions of the survey on tourism in the low season, carried out by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Ponta Delgada (CCIPD) between the 22nd and 29th of January, to companies on the islands of São Miguel and Santa Maria.
The CCIPD intended to “identify the current situation of companies and future perspectives according to activity indicators”, having received responses mainly from companies linked to tourism (local accommodation, hotels and restaurants) from four municipalities on the islands: Ponta Delgada, Vila do Porto, Ribeira Grande and Nordeste.
And of the responses received, 68% of companies point to the reduction in the number of seats offered by Ryanair (88 thousand fewer seats, round trip, between Ponta Delgada and Porto and Lisbon) as a factor impacting the volume of sales, which worsened in recent months.
Reserve contingent prepared for Cup game.
The PSP Regional Command and the GNR Azores Territorial Command are preparing reserve contingents for the Portuguese Cup game between Santa Clara and FC Porto, scheduled for tomorrow, February 7th, on the island of São Miguel, at 3pm.
Meetings at the regional command centres of the two security forces have intensified in recent days, due to what happened at national level over the weekend, when three meetings were postponed due to lack of policing, namely the 1st League game between Famalicão and Sporting, and the 2nd League games between Feirense and Académico de Viseu and between Leixões and Nacional.
The issue is ensuring that the Portuguese Cup quarter-final match takes place with the necessary presence of security forces at the São Miguel Stadium.
Three arrested for qualified homicide on Terceira Island
The Judiciary Police detained two women, aged 43 and 46, and a man, aged 25, due to strong evidence of the crime of qualified homicide, in the city of Praia da Vitória, Terceira Island, as part of a police operation, in which 14 searches were carried out on January 24th and 25th.
According to a statement from the Judiciary Police, the investigation, conducted by the Azores Criminal Investigation Department, “began on December 20, 2023, when the victim, aged 77, was found dead inside his residence”.
The evidence collected indicates that the two women “were co-authors of the crime, with the complicity of the first woman’s husband and that the younger woman, who maintained a loving relationship with the victim, planned, together with the 46-year-old woman, the appropriation of large sums of money. amounts of money and other goods, which the deceased kept at his residence”, says the Judicial Police.
To do this, “they went to the victim’s home, when there, they inflicted injuries on the man’s cranial region, using a blunt object”.
Present at the first judicial interrogation, the two women were placed in pre-trial detention. As for the 25-year-old man, the measure of coercion of identity and residence was applied to him.
Bad weather in the Azores caused 35 incidents on four islands on Monday, the majority in the municipality of Ponta Delgada, in São Miguel, Civil Protection said, detailing that the situations included flooding in homes, roads and landslides.
The municipality recalls that the accumulation of seaweed in the coastal area “is a natural and cyclical phenomenon, usually derived from sea currents or meteorological conditions favourable to its development and movement”.
On Sunday, at 07:19 local time (08:19 in Lisbon), an earthquake with magnitude 4.5 on the Richter scale was recorded and its epicentre was approximately one kilometre north-northwest (NNW) of the parish of Serreta, on the island Terceira.
The 31st edition of the World Travel Awards 2024, the Tourism Oscars, named Terra Nostra Garden Hotel as the Best Boutique Hotel in Portugal.
According to a statement from IPMA, the Hipolito depression, with an associated frontal system, will be, at 06:00 on Thursday, “centered around 300 km southwest (SW) of Faial, with pressure at its center 980 hPa”.
Finally, the IPMA placed the two islands in the Western group of the Azores (Flores and Corvo) on yellow warning, due to sea agitation (waves from the west, temporarily passing northwest, until 11pm on Tuesday), due to wind (direction of south, rotating southwest, between 11:00 local time and 8:00 pm on Tuesday) and due to sometimes heavy precipitation (between 2:00 pm local time and 8:00 pm on Tuesday).