Hotel infrastructure offers the security to supply more than enough beds

Monumental tasks, monumental problems, monumental cost: According to the calculations of the Secretary of State of infrastructure, Dâmocles Trinta, Natal will need to invest between R$ 350 million and R$ 500 million in order to prepare the city and ensure it is ready for the World Cup in 2014.

This cost does not include the construction of the new football stadium being built to host the games or the total cost of all the Administrative Centres, where the government houses the Secretaries of State. Cost: others R$ 500 million. Total: R$ 1 billion.

Now that Natal will be one of the 12 venues to host the games it will become a priority. The unresolved problems it seems, will have to win bids and make schedules with deadlines up until next year. An off set of the works of the World Cup is the extension of the Coastal Route (already started), being transformed into a major road connecting the southern and northern areas via the Newton Navarro Bridge.

There are also leading five star hotels that integrate the wonderful touristic apparatus of Natal, considered one of the largest in Brazil. With the World Cup, one priority pulls another. Among them, investment of R$ 200 million in the Southern part of Natal, including a probable (but perhaps not feasible, due to environmentalist zeal) "lift to the Morro do Careca", the main touristic site of the city.

The general impression after conversing with secretaries and directors of public companies involved in the project "Natal / Cup 2014" is that, in fact, if the city had not been chosen, the plans would be far more modest.

Transport, road systems, structures, hotels, urban mobility, air transport system - all these issues are the focus of changes in the short term. In addition to economic opportunities due to the preparation for the biggest event on the planet, the World Cup will force cultural advances on the population in the complex task of living with these changes.

"The public work will only be one side of the preparation. It will also be necessary for the population to adapt to the changes that will come", says Kelps Lima, Municipal Secretary of Traffic and Transport (STTU).

The Secretary of State of Infrastructure, Dâmocles Trinta, admits that this is a unique opportunity to leverage work that would have a long way to go without the necessary help of the so-called PAC's Cup (PAC = the government’s program to accelerate economic growth), launched by the Federal Government. In this sense, to be the chosen city of Fifa headquarters resembles finding a pot of gold or water in the heart of the desert.

"See the case of the VLT project - says Damocles - without the PAC's Cup chances of achieving the role would be remote, even in the long term." Hopes like the reform of the international airport Augusto Severo, in Parnamirim and the construction of passenger and cargo terminals of the new airport in São Gonçalo do Amarante (this work is not due to the World Cup) found in the event a reason to accelerate overall time, with help from the Federal Government.

The list of priorities is endless. Another project, originally budgeted at R$ 130 million and designed to link the nine cities of the Great Natal - Via Metropolitan - has also been granted by the whole project of the World Cup.

Via Metropolitan, once developed, will open an alternative path between the main modules of exportation throughout the State, the port of Natal and the airports Augusto Severo and São Gonçalo do Amarante.

Today, according to Demetrius Torres, Secretary of Municipal Works, only 12% of Pro-transport are concluded in its third year of implementation. All because of the difficulty that the city had carrying out dispossession.

"Now - Torres says relieved - this is a problem for the state." But it is the Secretary that warns: all those works also need good sewerage and sanitation. "And, as far as I know, they are pretty behind in Natal."

Number of beds are more than enough

Natal has matched the number of beds requested by Fifa from cities that have applied to host the World Cup of 2014.  According to Price Warterhouse Cooper, Natal would have to add 10,000 to 26,000 hotel beds.The hotel network, implemented in a more systematic way since the 1980s, based on Coast Avenue, is considered the best in the Northeast and one of the best equipped in the country regarding the number of beds. There are more than half of all existing beds in the city of São Paulo, the fourth principal in the physical dimensions of the planet.

In the Northeast, the network of hotels in Natal is four times higher than those in most capitals. The president of the Brazilian Association of Hotel Industry in RN, Enrico Fermi Torquato, who has approved projects for new hotels and resorts has stated that RN can achieve an extra 25 thousand beds by 2014. If there are not enough, Fermi says, Natal can count on the presence of passenger ships and utilise their beds.

The president of ABIH / RN shows that long before the announcement that Natal would be a host city, Natch, an English company that has worked with Fifa for two decades is taking care of blocking beds at the World Cup, "We have signed a contract blocking out 15,000 beds in Natal". In Rio de Janeiro, according to the President of Emprotur, Cláudio Porpino, the same company blocked only 6,000 beds. Enrico Fermi feels that the distance between Natal and Europe was an influence.

The airport Augusto Severo will finally be expanded to receive more than 2 million passengers per year and in 2014 and the government is already operating in the airport of São Gonçalo do Amarante, the largest passenger and cargo terminal in Latin America.

Cláudio Porpino, President of Emprotur has stated that the Government has plans to make improvements for bugueiros, taxi drivers, waiters and receptionists amongst others.

Transport will be modified

As it was only a "dream" for some, it has become a reality for all, the needs go far beyond what the city provides and the projects will include solutions that have been postponed for three decades: a change to the whole system of urban public transport.

With an average age of six years, the current fleet of buses exceeds acceptable levels. They have transported 400,000 passengers per day using a fleet of 712 buses, operated by seven different companies. The integration of a system (trains / buses / alternative) has often been studied and proposals made but they have never been effective. Terms of Adjustment of Conduct (TACs) have been concluded to include a younger fleet. It has not happened.

Today, on behalf of the Organic Law of the city of Natal, the state have no access to the companies to evaluate tariffs. With the introduction of the electronic card, the Mayor has been unable to access the data that companies keep locked up.

The Secretary of STTU, Kelps Lima, ensures that from the announcement of a new bid for public transport scheduled by the end of this year, "it is all reset." The idea is to start over and operate a new system by 2014.

Source: 01/06/2009 - Tribuna do Norte 

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