Brazil Hotels Offer Half-Price Daily Rates, Other Discounts, Valid Until 2021

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – With hotels closed or nearly empty, voucher sales are one of the means found by entrepreneurs in the sector to raise money now and secure occupation when social isolation measures are removed.

In promotional initiatives, clients have the right to daily stays in the second half of 2020 or 2021, with no need to choose the date of the trip at the time of purchase.

The Petrópolis Convention & Visitors Bureau, an organization that includes hotels, restaurants, trade, and services in the tourist destination city, is offering a promotion until May 12th in which, by buying a daily stay in one of the 12 selected lodgings, visitors get another day free.

The same goes for the 11 participating restaurants. When ordering a meal, customers get another in the same amount. Vouchers can be used until December. participating establishments can be found at Pvisitpetropolis.com/dobro.

“We expect people to buy them as gifts for Mothers Day and Valentine’s Day,” says Samir El Ghaoui, the organization’s president. According to him, hotels still open in the city have less than ten percent occupancy.

El Ghaoui also explains that the hotels and restaurants are ready to implement measures to help prevent infection by the coronavirus when trips are resumed, such as reducing service capacity, greater table spacing, and the use of sanitizer gel.

Hotelaria Brasil management will launch a promotion in two weeks along the same lines, in which the purchase of an R$80 (US$16) to R$150 voucher guarantees a sum of R$160 to R$300 to be used in daily stays until next year’s Carnaval.

The accommodations are located in the cities of Campinas, Jaguariúna, São Paulo, Guarulhos, Rio de Janeiro, Niterói, Cabo Frio, and Duque de Caxias, and the company hopes to attract residents of its own cities and neighboring municipalities, who will be able to take a car trip after the pandemic.

“We believe that this promotion will be successful because many people are experiencing a repressed need to travel,” says Gustavo França, the company’s sales director.

The Cristalino Lodge jungle hotel, located in Alta Floresta in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, is running a month-long promotion that features discount vouchers and the distribution of food, toys, and protective masks to residents.

The promotion provides a 25 percent discount on the daily rate for bookings of at least three nights (which would normally cost between R$9,500 and R$13,700), in an apartment for two people.

To qualify for the discount, an additional R$675 per room must be paid. According to Alex Riva, the hotel’s managing partner, the amount is donated to the Cristalino Foundation, which will provide a kit with food, personal hygiene products, and masks to keep a family for a month. “Our goal is to serve 500 people with this initiative,” he says.

The promotion, in addition to helping the hotel have the resources to survive, also benefits the city’s trade, Riva says. “All these supplies are purchased in the region, from local vendors.”

The discount makes up for the value of the kit since it represents a discount that ranges from R$1,975 to R$3,025 per room, according to the type of accommodation.

Bookings can be used until December 2021, including holidays. “One day this crisis will end and people will seek out and value nature, to be outdoors,” says the managing partner.

Source: Folhapress