Colonia seeks to expand its tourist offer with a competitive fund

“This is a call for a competitive fund. In Colonia, we do it jointly with the National Development Agency, with funds also from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). It is an important program that the ministry is developing,” explained Viera.

“Both businessmen and individual entrepreneurs will be able to sign up until July 27 to compete for a fund that we have made available of 5,600,000 pesos, from which the five best projects that have to do with nautical tourism, the historical heritage tourism or tourism in rural and natural spaces”, he explained.

The government hopes with the initiative to promote new gastronomy businesses, tourism linked to rural, agricultural production, everything that has to do with heritage, since Colonia has a very important base with the declared old city Unesco heritage.

– Is the idea to continue developing this initiative in other corners of the country?

– We are executing some projects in the route 8 hub As the mining tourism, For example. Then the ministry through the public policies that it develops with the departmental governments and with the private sector, that is, the different corporations such as the Uruguayan Chamber of Tourism, we develop training courses and with certain investments that help departmental governments in tourism infrastructure. What is being achieved is decentralize tourismwhich ultimately end up being not only alternative products, but an extension of the offer

– Is it possible, in the medium term, that cruise ships also arrive in Colonia, as they do today in Montevideo and Punta del Este?

– That is a sector that happily comes in handy. In this season that ended we had cruise ship arrival record in the last eight years and the coming season promises, according to what is already being worked on in some specialized fairs such as Miami and now shortly we will have another in Germany. It has been confirmed that the arrival of tourists will surely expand even more.

And now we are working on the possibility that some smaller cruises have the city of Colonia as their destination, surely anchoring nearby. Are high purchasing power touristsluxury cruise and the idea is that they can enjoy a day trip in Cologne.

– Three large projects are in the pipeline in the departments of Colonia, Paysandú and Rocha. How are they progressing?

– Today we are considering all of Uruguay, the 19 departments as tourist departments. They all have an interesting, original, different tourist offer, which is also complementary because tourists today want to have experiences, not just be in a place “belly up” for 10 days or 15 days.

We work to support the tourist infrastructure, the quality of services, training, improve the offer in general and we are working on accessibility, sustainability, all values ​​that inspire us.

These projects have to do with proposals for the construction of high-level hotels, with good services such as the one proposed for Paysandú, which is a private initiative. In that case it was approved and now it has to be called for bidding.

Also the idea of ​​a hotel of a certain category in Rocha and what is the conversion of the old casino hotel of Carmelo, in the department of Colonia, which is a property of the Ministry of Tourism. All this is still being processed in terms of calls for bids, the specifications on our part are ready. Today they are in the Ministry of Economy by including a casino proposal

In short, we understand that this year the calls will be made and we hope that there will be bidders based on the fact that there are also signs of interest from some private individuals who have been consulting.

How to apply to the Cologne competitive fund?

Uruguayan for-profit companies that are up to date with their tax obligations, have less than 19 employees and an annual turnover of less than 10 million Indexed Units (UI) can apply. Entrepreneurs over the age of 18 who are based in the country and seek to develop projects related to tourism may also apply.

Only projects located in the department of Colonia will be considered in the areas of Nautical Tourism, Historical-Cultural Tourism and Tourism in Rural and Natural Spaces (TERN), which include wine tourism, gastronomy, ecotourism, adventure, equestrian tourism, astrotourism, geotourism, tourism mining and agrotourism.

Companies and ventures that want to participate in the call must complete the application form before July 27, at 2:00 p.m., which can be accessed through the ANDE website.