“We have great confidence in Carlos as president, and in his work.” These are words pronounced yesterday by Vicente Boluda, president of the Valencian Association of Entrepreneurs (AVE), yesterday in Benidorm. The Valencian shipping company was referring to Carlos Mazón, leader of the PP, attending the event on tourism that the employers had scheduled in the tourist city the week after the 28-M elections. Boluda assured that the future head of the Council -if everything goes according to plan- has already demonstrated during the last four years at the head of the Alicante Provincial Council “what he does and what he is capable of doing”.
As expected, Boluda applauded the proposal formulated by Mazón to repeal the tourist tax as soon as he comes to power, since “it is not good for tourism” as it is “another tax” that, in the businessman’s opinion, harms a productive sector as important in the Valencian Community as tourism, with respect to other competing destinations.
This very explicit support, beyond the natural coincidences between the main conservative party and the business community, could be interpreted as a correspondence to what Mazón himself demonstrated a few months ago towards the members of the Valencian employers’ association meeting in Alicante, in the midst of a wave of attacks launched from the “purple” sector of the Valencian and Spanish governments. Then, Mazón assured that “criticism of businessmen would be unthinkable in other countries.”
But yesterday not everything was praise, there was also room for demands. Boluda urged the new government to speed up the implementation of the Mediterranean Corridor, “the development of the rail network along the coast and the increase in airport links and the maritime mode of connection for cruise and nautical tourism.”
For this, the president of AVE believes it is necessary to “make citizens aware of the importance of tourism and involve them in its development” and “promote a strategy led by businessmen, with greater coordination with the administration to avoid duplication, economize and disseminate the reality tourism in the Valencian Community”.
He also called for “promoting training, professionalization and quality, with the collaboration of tourism entrepreneurs” and “promoting more collaboration among more companies to define tourism products in quality segments and identify innovative or future tourism products.”
