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Town twinning brings thousands of tourists to Albufeira
• 13 Jun 2007 •
 MORE than 25,000 Austrian tourists are set to visit the Algarve during the low tourist season. A town twinning project which is set to join, until the end of this year, Algarve’s Albufeira with the Austrian city of Linz, has made possible this considerable increase in the number of tourists coming from a country that previously hasn’t had much impact on Algarve’s tourism industry.
To prepare the town twinning project, a delegation from Linz Town Council has visited Albufeira.
The two vice-presidents of the Austrian city’s town council, Ingrid Holzhammer and Christiana Dolezal, headed the delegation. During the three-day visit, the mayor of Albufeira took the Austrians on a tour of the town’s main tourist attractions, including the Oura and Sao Rafael beaches, the marina and the Zoomarine theme park. They also visited a local primary school, the municipal swimming pools, the town’s public library and Albufeira’s main waste water treatment plant which is one of the largest in the Algarve.
Mayor of Albufeira, Desidério Silva, explained to the visitors that this is one of the most important investments made by the town council because Albufeira is known worldwide for its beaches, and the this plant that helps to keep the beaches and the sea so clean. The mayor added that after being treated at the plant, the water is so clean that a large percentage of it can be recycled and used to wash the town’s streets, as well as for watering public gardens and golf courses.
After a meeting at the town hall, Mayor Desidério said: “We have set the priorities for the town twinning project which are tourist promotion, education, culture, sports and social affairs. We have also accepted an invitation to visit Linz in September to continue to work on this project and we believe that by the end of the year, we will be ready to sign the official town twinning document. We have also scheduled another visit to Austria in February 2008 to participate in the Linz Tourism Fair.” The mayor added: “The European Union has recently launched the Europe for Citizens’ Programme 2007-2013 which has as one of its main priorities encouraging co-operation between EU towns, and mutual understanding between their citizens through formal town twinning agreements. This was our first answer to this initiative and we are already working on other possibilities, which could in the near future link Albufeira to other European towns, for example in Holland and in Ireland.”
In an exclusive interview with The Euro Weekly News, Linz Vice-President Christiana Dolezal said: “We have discussed many fields in which we will be working together. Linz will be the European Capital of Culture in 2009, so we believe we can have very good co-operation in the field of culture, but also in the fields of sports, schools and social affairs, especially special tourism for seniors. Our senior citizens like to travel in April and we believe we have the possibility of sending up to 25,000 to Albufeira during a month which is outside the high summer tourism season.” |  Return to Top
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