Know a little more about the company I do many of my tours with.
In a bold and family-oriented project, the new Travel Agency that operates in the tourist market of Madeira, Pearl of the Atlantic Madeira, in the voice of its representative, promises to continue the fantastic work that his father started in the distant 50’s. The quality of services, on the other hand, seems to be ensured, as evidenced by the most diverse awards that it has received on different digital platforms.
Its history as an Agency is very recent, however, its job as a promoter of Madeira tourism, at the time, as a Taxi company, dates back to the year of 1956.
Madeira Island News, took the opportunity to contact the representative of the most recent Madeira Travel Agency, Duarte Nunes, to be able to understand a little more about the history of this sixty-year-old firm and simultaneously envision its future in a deeply competitive market such as Madeira Island, which represents more than 85% of its economy.
Company history
In 1956 and the result of an extraordinary vision of a Madeiran emigrant, just returned from Brazil and Curaçau, João Nunes, better known as “Rocha”, born in Machico, began one of the most ambitious projects to date in the area of tourism with the acquisition of several Taxis, creating a company called “Machim”. This name was given by “Rocha” itself because of the known legend of Machim, which would later become the basis of the name of Machico, the first City of Madeira and the first Portuguese Captaincy.
For over 60 years, João Nunes, took the name of Madeira Island to the four corners of the world, promoting his Island like few others, always revealing an unusual passion for tourism, offering to his customers great quality services at all levels.
Humble person of great education, self-taught, entrepreneur, with only the fourth grade, which was the minimum education at the time, learned several languages only through contact with customers being known throughout in Madeira by the “Poliglota Rocha”, as he fluently mastered several languages, such as: English, German, French, Dutch, Norwegian, Spanish, Italian and of course Portuguese.
In July 2014, João Nunes passed away, victim of heart problems, a few months later his youngest son along with his wife took on the enormous responsibility of continuing this project, transforming the taxi company into a company of Tourist Animation and most recently in Travel Agency.
Continuing the project
In contact with Madeira Island News, Duarte Nunes, Director of Pearl of the Atlantic, assumes that his objective is to continue his father’s work, “with some changes” inherent in the fact that currently he does not only do Taxi services. Duarte, recognises the enormous difficulty that is to lead a tourism project in a market, which, according to him, is saturated and the result of this reality there has been made strategic mistakes, one after the other, enumerating the main one that, in his opinion, will trigger a collapse very soon in many of the companies, such as the dramatic drop in prices “that we offer to tourists who visit the island”. “As much respect as I have and must have for Third World Countries, Madeira seems to be moving fast to become not a country, but a third world island”.
According to our interlocutor, Madeira depends exclusively on Tourism, for which it fears, the path that most companies are following, exemplifying, “currently bus prices of 30 seats are practised at the values that in the 1980s were done by an 8-seater van”.
Duarte, take the opportunity to make an appeal to decision-makers “it is time to solve serious and profound problems, which have conditioned us, the prices of air travel, the limits of the winds that greatly complicate airport operations, the frightening neglect of many of our landscape references and a deep strategic remodelling in the promotion of Madeira destination, with a view to finding new markets ”.