Diario Notícias ‘Memory Channel’ heads back to 1995.
At 12:00 on January 31, 1995, the Atlantis Hotel, located in Água de Pena, was empty. The last guests left the hotel that day.
Expectations were high as the future of the hotel’s 230 employees was unknown. The departure of guests from the hotel over the last few days was accompanied by emotion, with guests crying after learning the fate of the tourist resort.
“We only know that the hotel will have a zero occupancy rate from January 31st. Apart from that, nothing else was said. We will report to our workstations, stick to the schedule and wait”, said José António Jardim, a trade unionist.
Everything indicated that the collective dismissal was indeed going to happen, so there was concern about the unemployment situation into which all these workers would be ‘thrown’.
The hotel’s situation became more serious with the model of the new Madeira airport, as the project was on a “collision course” with planes, leading to the need for its demolition.