Guillermo Villarreal
08/07/2020 - 17:39
- Clarín.com
- Society
The adjective applied by tourist service providers on the Atlantic Coast is exactly the same as the one used by the Buenos Aires minister of health when he referred to the summer season. Only they use it in the opposite sense: for them, the "unimaginable" is that there is no summer season .
For a sector that day by day is acknowledging receipt of the bruises that months of zero activity bring, the phrase of Daniel Gollán fell like a bomb : "It is unimaginable that, if we do not have a vaccine, hundreds of thousands of Buenos Aires and Buenos Aires citizens will go from the Conurbano to the Coast. They would carry the disease in a massive way, "said the Minister of Health of the Province of Buenos Aires.
He pronounced it just on the day that the record of infections in the country was registered, and it is still consistent. But on the Atlantic Coast, operators do not stop preparing thinking about the different scenarios that summer can present, adapting protocols for each activity. The coincidence is unanimous: there will be a season and it will be "different . "
The Buenos Aires Minister of Health, Daniel Gollán, said that without a vaccine a summer season on the coast is unimaginable. In the seaside towns they think otherwise. Photo: Luciano Thieberger.
"What is unimaginable for us is that there is no summer season," the mayor of Pinamar , Martín Yeza , told Clarín within hours of being discharged: the young official (34 years old) and his family were infected with coronavirus. He understands that specific care will have to be taken for the season: "It will be resolved, because there are tools to work with," he explains.
The hotel industry, which has not yet opened, and the gastronomy, already have their protocols. Well-trained working bars and restaurants will have theirs for when summer rolls around. Even with a difference in the phases of one and the other, gastronomists already work on the Coast .
But for the spas the sanitary regulation is being elaborated. This Friday, the businessmen of those who are located in Mar del Plata would have a new talk with tourism officials.
The image of a Mar del Plata beach in January of this year. In 2021, everything will be different. Photo: Florencia Colli
"Until there is no vaccine, all activities return with protocol and tourism will not be the exception," the head of the Municipal Tourism Authority (Emtur) of Mar del Plata, Federico Scremin, explained to this newspaper. "We are working and maintaining contact with the different chambers related to tourism, every day we prepare for when tourism reactivates ."
"It will be different, we already know that, but we still do not know how it will be, " said the owner of a spa on the northern beaches of Mar del Plata.
In Mar del Plata there are no values yet, but operators are beginning to receive inquiries . "They want to know if there are already rates, also how it will be," Miguel Angel Donsini, head of the Martilleros College, tells this newspaper, which already has a protocol approved by the province of Buenos Aires for rentals .
"For example, there will be no hot bed," he explains: it means that when a family leaves a house or apartment, that property will be closed for a day for disinfection and ready for new tenants. The auctioneers meet in September to set the values for the season.
It is still under study which protocol will be applied in the seaside resorts of the Coast. Photo: Maxi Failla
Yeza understands that the application of a protocol in the spas "will be a challenge", and in his district they have not yet been elaborated. Clarín consulted operators and although they do not know what a day at the beach will be like in coexistence with the pandemic, they understand that the keys will be given in social distancing and the amount of public that they will be able to receive.
"We gained 100 thousand meters of beaches with the reformulation of the waterfront", Yeza is enthusiastic, proposing to "expand" the possibilities of the destination with, for example, mountain bike trails and amphitheatres to attend shows in open spaces, since they could not be held in theaters.
The reading made by the mayor of Pinar del Rio these days is that the next season will be for longer stays and with less turnover of people , as a result of the travelers' own change in behavior. For Yeza, this dynamic could imply that "there is a lower rate of consumption." Last year, tourists stayed an average of 5.5 nights.
In Villa Gesell , tour operators will have a seal of sanitary quality that will distinguish them, "it will require new habits in the provision of services", explained the Secretary of Tourism, Emiliano Felice, convinced that it is necessary to see what happened in other countries , but not copy anyone: "We must generate our own system on the Atlantic Coast," he assured.
NS
