Brazil - Promotion, Hype and Facts

I find your statement on Brasil being over promoted on UK tv a little hard to understand, I have seen one program dedicated to Northeast Brasil, and that was over a year ago, it was called uncharted territory, and featured the area around Bouzios, that is what sparked my interest in buying in Rio Grande do Norte, since then little or no more info on the region seems to have been shown, not even a repeat of that one, I obviously have not seen every program on tv, but do tend to check to see if there is anything relating to Brasil, but apart from the odd clips about Rio, nothing.You obviously see far more UK tv living in Natal, than I do living here in Yorkshire, please let me know when these programs are being shown, and I will definitely tune in.

 

Hi Graymax,
It may be an idea to check all tourist destinations on Brasil for 2007/8 in every journal under travel and property and also places in the sun did lots of promoting and investment programmes ,magazines etc etc for the overseas also,along with word of mouth of people that have been to South America.You will be surprised how much has been done along with all the property fairs etc.Now considering most people are only just learning that we speak Portuguese here and not Spanish thats not bad.The real truth is what may be marvellous for some is not for others and thats it and the UK market is rok bottom with a lot of uncertainty and hugh dept,so what was fab 5 yrs ago is now not worth vey much here or in the uk.

 

Everybody seems to be under a total illusion about NE Brazil. Firstly, you cannot get there cheaply by any method....Arkefly leaves from Amsterdam so from anywhere but NL add £150/€200 for parking, taxis, meals, connections and you are at the same price as TAP and that's your lot min £700..look at Dubai for the coming UK holiday weekend (pan Europe in fact) and there are flights as low as £250 return for the same distance as Natal/Lisbon. Natal is a destination which is well behind the competition, everything they have (or don't have) does not cater for the mass tourist market which Operators need. The hotels are generally poor and certainly not worth their star rating, there is little entertainment bar Salsa Street and one music bar on the beach which most Gringos don't know about. There is nothing for children. To get in and out of the airport is a scandal and I have only ever seen such poorly run security at Heathrow and Salvador. Just taking money is a nightmare as card cloning is rife and therefore carring cash and or t chqs is a real hassle and with rip off rates. As it happens I like Natal and the area, but nobody in their right mind would say it is easy as a tourist destination nor is it correct to say it has been over promoted. Most people I speak to in the Uk say "where"? It is for this reason that all the self imposed hype and confidence about the local property market is ridiculous...Natal and 100km each side is not and will not be a major tourist destination full stop.

With regard to Thomson, their flights are a "means to an end" in other words, they do not run the flights to make money, they run the flights to take customers who buy "all inclusive packages and excursions" to make money..they are a Tour Operator. So, full flights with people going to off plan properties will never be viable for them or any other charter airline as their is no incremental income..hence the reason why off plan rentals will never boom...it is too far away, unlike Europe where Ryanair for example have very low crew costs and very cheap handling..no baggage forexample...there is absolutely no comparison.

 

I guess we are all entitled to an opinion! Natal is, and will continue to be, a growing tourist destination, not just from Europe but from other parts of the world as well including Brasil. I have not met anyone who complains about the service or quality or hotels, which the tour operators use, either! Entertainment Ibiza style is not what everyone is looking for, and kids are generally happy playing on the beach. There are more places in the town centre with live bands (rock, reggae, popular,) than you would know about, and more night clubs (boate) with disco music than you know. Most weekends there are live shows in huge open air venues, which can hold 10-15000 people and are hugely successful, where the famous (in Brazil) bands play music of all types.

 

Michael, you are right, but these venues are not what "bucket and spaders" on Thomson or T Cooke from the Uk want nor is it appropriate and it is about £15 in a cab into town.....the "inclusive tour business" is not about having to go into town to find a typically Brasilian bar or disco I am afraid. Likewise, have you been to Mexico (Cancun) Dom Rep (Baviero/Pto Plata), Thailand, Goa and seen the hotels and facilities on offer? Most UK long haul typical cheap vacations are based on ease, comfort and most importantly all inclusive accommodation...Natal does not have anything that compares to the above destinations. Add to that the nervousness about Brazil (crime etc) from the uninitiated and it is not a destination that will boom. Dom Rep is way way ahead of Brazil in all aspects. Again, if I may say, those associated with Natalseem to be blinkered to the real world and the real cheap long haul world is way ahead of NE Brazil.

 

I could not agree more GW.as for pounding night life not Natal.It is not Ibiza.The people that attend a boate(club) are people who are young Brasilian stds maybe at a weekend and they are for the local people unless you are dragged there by a woman of the night,but there is not anything that can amuse a child for 5 minutes and as any parent will know they want to keep kids active and safe.A friend of mine just fell over an electric cable in a kids club fell and broke her arm and she was only walking in and she is 6 mths pregnant.Another woman was walking along the beach (2006 /7)and was shot in the foot for her money(outside Parque Costeira Hotel) she had none on her(she was a thomson client)another guy was shot last yr in ponta negra for money and ended up in the military hospital,maybe you can elaborate on that if you know about these incidents or speak to the Thomson reps .The safety issue is always the same in 3rd world countries none more so than Natal.Go and read the latest crime reports for more info.They did have a strong police presence after the shottings but there are far fewer around now which I cant quite understand if crime is on the up.

 

Natal will always be a "singles" destination as the family facilities and security are not there. What Thomson have demonstrated is that they have voted with their feet and let First Choice take the Brazil market where they are strong and can make money. Natal's tourist industry is in a mess and it stumbles along.....if they cannot get Ponta Negra right what chance is there for the north and southerly coastlines...my guess, very little....which is why, if anyone intends to inves, go central Natal or PN and not up the coast as it will take 15 years to get it right up there.

 

confused

Dotty, once again you are going round in circles, you talk about places in the sun, I have seen virtually every program of A place in the sun, since 2000, and am currently watching the repeats on some obscure chanel, not once have I seen any mention of RGN, but I wait in hope, you base everything on hearsay, and what other people have said I don,t think you have come up with one sustainable fact not already mentioned on these forums, and repeatedly bad mouth Natal area, as if you want to keep it all to yourself, if it is so bad, why don,t you up sticks and go to Salvador or Rio or Florianopolis or indeed anywhere else, and slag these places off for a change.Which UK market is "ROK BOTTOM" and in "HUGH DEPT", because I and probably most other members are at a loss as to what the hell you are talking about.?.

 

Well, I can tell that a property company made a half page advertising here in Dubai for the property show; and the only Brazilian city on their list was Natal, That's when I decided to cancel my family trip to Italy (paid all the fines for cancellation), and buy something in the NE of Brazil.
Dotty, just for the record, Brazil is not a third-world country. JM already correct you but you keep forgetting, or don't understand ...
San Francisco easily goes in my top 5 cities of the world (disclosure: I'm not gay! not that there is anything wrong with that), nevertheless I was robbed there from Sheraton to the airport. My Argentinian friend was beaten to the floor, by two guys using guns, just for his pocket money. Still I love San Francisco!!
Anyway, I doubt that any foreigner doesn't know that there is violence in Brazil, they might be surprised that it is actually less than they would expect, especially outside Rio-Sao Paulo.

 

Swapped Dotty for GW on my ignore list after reading some of GW's more recent posts, although GW and I still don't share the same view of the future for the NE of Brazil, the posts seem to be a lot more temperate as of late, whereas Dotty's babbling is getting on my nerves.

 

FCZ;

Common misnomer, and unfortunately, even amongst brazilians. Sao Paulo and Rio get a lot of bad press because of the crime there, but it's because they are the largest cities. If you want statistics you will see that Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo capitol aren't even in the top 100 most dangerous cities in Brazil! Proportionally speaking the most dangerous cities/towns in Brazil are normally small places in the interior of states and suburbs of capitols such as Camaragibe, Pernambuco which is a suburb of Recife where the murder rate there last count was 181 per 100,000.

And I saw JM's post about Brazil and not being classified as third world, it was the last ranked country under the list of supposed first world countries. And I don't want to get into a pissing contest but when one has the massive problems that Brazil has with education and infrastructure, it's impossible for me to think of it as 1st world.

 

However to compare it to Rwanda or Côte d'Ivoir or Sierra Leone might be a bit too much too, so maybe go in between and call it a developing country or an "emerging market".

I mean when was the last time a jeep full of children carrying AK-47's drove through Aracajú?

 

Ralph,

I will certainly not classified Brazil as a first world country!! It's is classified as "upper middle income" country by the World bank, or emerging economy, those economies that are, in theory, in the pipeline to be among the big ones. My point is that Dotty insists in call "third-world" clearly with the purpose of given a negative connotation, that is not correct.

 

Go to the favelas in Rio and you'll see similiar....but not in Aracaju. Only 20 somethings GATE (police) hanging out the windows of their cars carrying their automatic weapons while flying down the road at 140 km/hour in a 60.

I guess my interpretation of the differences of 1st and 3rd world are more in education, quality of life, opportunity, etc. When a country consistantly ranks in the top 3-5 worst countries on the planet in things like minimum salary, equal distribution of income, violent deaths, it's really hard for me to consider that first world.

 

Agree on Income distribution, but top 3-5 among minimum salary and education?! No way!

 

Seems a bit harsh too 3-5 on violent deaths?

What about

Niger
Sierra Leone
Côte d'Ivoir


.. in fact many of the below I'd expect more violent deaths than in Brazil, at least ratio of population...

Senegal
Eritrea
Nigeria
Tanzania, U. Rep. of
Guinea
Rwanda
Angola
Benin
Malawi
Zambia
Côte d'Ivoire
Burundi
Congo, Dem. Rep.
Ethiopia
Chad
Central African Republic
Mozambique
Mali
Niger
Guinea-Bissau
Burkina Faso
Sierra Leone

 

Didn't say education FCZ, but, within the last year they did a survey of 30+ developing countries in quality of education, and Brazil came in dead last. It was all over the news here and Lula had to comment on it and admitted that Brazil's educational system needs a lot of improvement.

Quite an understatement.


I said that Brazil is consistantly in the worst 3-5 countries in the world in "minimum salary, equal distribution of income, violent deaths". And if you do the research and see the statistics over the last 5 years you will find that unfortunately, this is indeed so.

 

Check it out JM....I can get the stats for you later. Columbia is normally at the top of the list and Brazil usually comes in 3rd. We have close to 60,000 people that die here per year from violent deaths. I'm talking about sheer numbers here, not ratio.

 

I think Dotty is realistic with some of the things he says.....much as I don't agree that Natal/NE Brazil has been extensively promoted, what he does do, like me is tell the real story and not the "Premiership Managers...let's take the positives out of this defeat".

The reality is that many of the over cooked positives about Natal area are between untruths and spin and these have been heavily debated here which is exactly what this site is available....then the unitiatiated buyer (which is most people) can make a valued judgement as to how where and why they might invest. In my view, he is realistic about Natal and I have seen and experienced similar things..what, for example is the definition of a "Third World Country", it is to us (allegedly) in the first world, somewhere where things don't quite work as we would expect and that there is a risk element, lack of protection and facilities that one would expect in our cherished first world. Brazil has a mixture of 1st 2nd and 3rd world from what I can see, but there is no doubt that petty crime is a problem all over and the more Gringos that go there there more it will increase the desire for a quick buck. What I have seen in NE Brazil is an apathy towards a real development plan (apart from Bahia) and so his ramblings on Natal are very valid in my view.

The reality is that as there was a lot of cheap land and close links to Europe the new European Property Conquistadores arrived 3/5 years ago then set about trying to convince all those that hadn't already invested in Murcia that Natal was going to be the next quick property off plan buck. They did this by carefully tailoring facts and alleged benefits such as airports, bridges, roads, etc etc....when people like myself or Dotty arrived on the scene we bacame like the little boy in "The Kings New Set of Clothes" (Danny Kaye..for those not old enough) whilst all the seller set about defending their poorly constructed positive story. The fact is, NE Brazil (which is all I know apart from Rio) is difficult, nowhere near as cheap as it seems, and certainly not moving fast into the first world of tourist destinations that all the sellers would like to claim. This is a flight thread and flights are key for overseas investors, logically, and there aint none regular or cheap...so it is going tocost youan arm and a leg to get there before you get mugged, raped or pillaged....and before you tenants folow you...that is the true story and Dotty isn't far off the mark..it's just that many don't wan to hear the negatives as it inhibits sales! End of story.