Nautical Tourism in the North Atlantic: The Development of Yachting in the Azores Islands

Introduction

The Azores is an Atlantic autonomous archipelago composed by nine islands. It is located 2085 nautical miles (NM) East of Boston (USA), 1359 NM Southwest of London (UK) and 782 NM West from the Portuguese capital, Lisbon. Since its discovery by the Portuguese sailors in the 15th century, the Azorean archipelago has become a geostrategic territory for several sea routes. In addition to its own geographic location in the North Atlantic, the maritime currents and the prevailing winds of the west provided and provide, as almost necessary and advantageous, a route for sailing boats through the Azores to those coming from America and Africa and going to Europe.

Although virtually all yachts today have an auxiliary engine, most of those which cross the Atlantic use sail and wind direction as the main source energy for navigation. In this sense, the natural elements (maritime currents, winds and the location of the archipelago) remain an advantage and continue to provide the navigation of these vessels through the Azores when crossing the North Atlantic. Every year, thousands of yachts come from the Pacific (through the Panama channel), the Caribbean and North America to Europe (and vice versa). Being one of the few land territories in this part of the Atlantic, the Azores is a potential stopover for yachtsmen when crossing the ocean.

At the end of the last century (1990s) the Regional Government started implementing tourism as a key sector for the archipelago’ development. Since then, the Azores have been awarded (more than 30 times), especially in this second decade of the 21^st century, as a tourism destination related to nature preservation and landscape sustainability (due to its volcanic origin and present relief characteristics and vegetation cover). Some of those awards include: 2010 – 2^nd Best islands in the world for sustainable tourism (award granted by the National Geographic Travel); 2010 – Election of the 7 natural wonders of Portugal, where the Azores won two of them (volcanic landscape of Pico Island and Lagoon of Sete Cidades, in São Miguel Island); 2011 – 10 Best Trips of Summer 2011 (National Geographic Travel); 2012 – Best Places to go in 2012 (The University of Nottingham Magazine); 2013 – 25 Places to go in 2013 (Fodor’s Travel Guide); and in 2017 – Election of the seven wonders of Portugal – small villages (Fajã dos Cubres in São Jorge Island was selected). As identified by other states and governments, sustainability is nowadays essential for the good development of territories, and this element is and should be also part of the nautical tourism segment (Battistella, Cagnina, Cicero, & Preghenella, 2018).

Based on the development of tourism activity in the Azores, since 2008 and through the Regional Legislative Decree n. 38/2008/A, August 11^th, it was approved the Plano de Ordenamento Turístico da Região Autónoma dos Açores, POTRAA (Tourism Planning Plan of the Autonomous Region of the Azores). It defines the strategy of sustainable development of tourism and the territorial model to be adopted. Its fundamental vocation is to combine the efforts and initiatives of regional and local public administrations and those of the whole Azorean society around a set of commonly shared objectives. It is also an instrument that guides the various economic agents and disciplines the administrative action, defining for each island the strategic tourism products and the evolution of the tourist supply until 2015 (at the present is under review). It is in this context that the Regional Government elected nautical tourism as one of the tourism products that should be developed (Assembleia Legislativa da Região Autónoma dos Açores, 2008).

One of the key elements selected for the development of nautical tourism in the Azores, by the Regional Government, was to endow almost all the islands with marinas. Until 2007, only three islands had recreational ports. In 2019 there are nine marinas located on seven of the nine islands (see Figure 2). It is precisely on this investment of the regional government for the support of nautical tourism, more specifically of the yachting, that this chapter focuses on, providing a global analysis of this tourism segment in the Portuguese archipelago of the Azores. Therefore, the objectives are to systematize the Azores marinas (tourism supply) as to their characteristics, as well as to describe and analyse the numbers relating to yachts and their crew (tourism demand). The general objective is to find out if yachting has been growing in the Azores, fomenting itself as a complementary opportunity for the economic development of the Azores.