The Algarve now has a network of authorised motorcaravan sites with the launch of the Algarve Motorhome Support Network (RAARA).
The network was launched in Espiche last week and the tourist board has produced a leaflet for travellers which lists the parking sites and offers some useful hints.
Of the 25 site owners wanting to join the new network, 22 were up to standard or had some minor work to do to pass muster. Formally established in January 2015, the network includes camping and caravan sites, rural camping and caravan sites and motorhome service areas.
The main goal is 'to promote legal accommodations in a quality setting that is comfortable and safe.'
The projects stems from a long-overdue agreement between the Algarve Regional Development and Coordination Commission (CCDR Algarve), Algarve Tourism, the Algarve Tourism Association (ATA) and the mayors’ group, AMAL.
The campsite owners already have voiced concerns that the new network scheme fails to exclude non-RAARA registered site from operating and have called for better policing and law changes to leave them as the sole providers.
Paying for registration and the costs of legally operating is particularly hard when other site owners flout the laws and evade taxation, according to feedback at the launch at which the campsite owners present were not impressed that after so long the emphasis was on their registration rather than on policing the non-registered sites that seem able to operate without official interference.
Desidério Silva from the tourist board asked delegates to send in their complaints in writing, hardly helpful, and David Santos of the CCDR-A said that there had been lots of work done in the past six or seven years just to get this far and that the end result desired is to end wild camping which often is in ecologically sensitive areas, is illegal but erratically policed.
This tourist board leaflet is available on-line in Portuguese, English and Spanish but will also be produced in French, Dutch and German at some point.
Desidério Silva said that motorcaravanning contributes to the local economy, especially in the autumn, winter and spring off-season months with 80% of the country’s motorcaravanners located in the Algarve, 90% of which are foreigners.
The conclusion is that the scheme, after years of gestation, fails to tackle the problem of wild camping but does tie a route of sites together but whose owners now are annoyed that the policing of the scheme no doubt will focus on them, rather than on the illegal operators.
Go to -
http://www.visitalgarve.pt/visitalgarve/vEN/VivaOAlgarve/477//Sugestoes/Motorhome+in+Algarve.htm
or click on Motorhome in Algarve
Comments
This proposal is really simply an attempt by a few campsites to get themselves a monopoly.
Great comment, you've really got the point! The so called "wild camping" never hurt anyone... except the eyes of the poor motorhomes' haters! Instad of blindly and stupidly punishing it GNR & co. should better use their time hitting the real environment destroyers: they would surprisingly find out that the "naughty" motorhomers are just no more than a handful on a thousand, the true polluters are elsewhere to be found! Sadly dogs and motorhomes share a similar fate: some people love them, some other hate them - and nothing in between!
Many hundreds never actually licensed to be operating in Portugal but paying Portuguese tax. So, maybe with a local bung or two to keep Regional Tourism at bay staying open over the years.
Amazingly advertising amongst the hundreds of others in the annual Portuguese Camping site handbook and getting rave articles in their own camping magazines back in the Netherlands or Germany. Always worded - check this yourself - as meeting the highest standards of the Netherlands Tourism Board (or the German equivalent. )
Yet never actually licensed in Portugal as unsuitable and therefore never properly insured. Thank you Portugal for your contribution to the Union !
Fire regulations rule out forested areas; that's why campgrounds can never be made much differently to the common model. Those campgrounds are like congested little cities, people don't drive thousands of kilometers for that.
"Wild camping" is much reviled, but I fail to see why. Let them park where they like I say.
There are hundreds of kilometers of deserted coastline in the off season, baragems and rural areas too.
Let local councils decide their own policies and stop this "one rule for everyone" made in Lisbon mentality. There are areas where wild camping is the only tourism there is.
If they become a nuisance, the local council should have the power to say whether they be moved on.
The licensed campgrounds have a lot of good facilities, security, and so on. Using and paying for that should be a matter of choice, not police enforcement.
Can we assume, as is often the case in central and northern Portugal, that the non registered owners are of just as good standard as the registered (many being already registered in their own northern EU countries so routinely getting their own countryfolk in great numbers) but are of the wrong nationality - i.e. not Portuguese? So cannot be allowed to operate legally in the Algarve?
And this is supposedly a country that has had 30 years in the European Union ?