Affordable houses for workers

Lack of affordable housing remains one of the Algarve’s largest issues and the president of the region’s largest hotel association said that the Algarve’s hoteliers want to build housing to retain workers and combat the labour shortage in the tourism sector. They are asking the government to make land available at affordable prices.

The president of the Association of Hotels and Tourist Development in the Algarve (AHETA), Hélder Martins, said that the hoteliers’ request “has been made repeatedly for at least two years to various ministers and secretaries of state and has still not been granted”.

“We have been asking for plots of land that can be made available at acceptable prices, not market prices, to build social housing for hotel workers”, he said. According to Hélder Martins, the lack of decent, affordable housing is the biggest problem that needs to be tackled to fight the lack of labour in tourism and to retain talent in the region, which is struggling with a labour shortage in the sector.

The head of AHETA went on to say that “the aim is to be able to build housing of various types, four or five kilometres away from the hotels, to be made available to employees”.

Solving the housing shortage in the Algarve has become a priority strategy for other entrepreneurs in terms of recruiting labour, a problem that has been getting worse in recent years.