Aerial photo of the city of Belém. Photo by Fernando Frazão
By AFP - Agence France Presse
Belém needs to more than double the number of hotel beds for COP30
The hotel chain expects to increase from 18,000 to 50,000 places
BRUNO DE FREITAS MOURA - AGÊNCIA BRASIL REPORTER
Published on 05/01/2025 Agência Brasil - 11:32
Rio de Janeiro
Built-in art nouveau and neoclassical styles, the São Brás Market has been reopened in Belém, Pará. The historic building houses more than 300 markets and stores selling food, herbs, handicrafts, and clothing. The restoration of the site is the first in a series of interventions that will be completed in the city over the coming months.
Belém is preparing to host the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30), which will take place from November 10 to 21, 2025. The conference is an important international meeting to discuss the environment and decisions to help curb global warming, which causes climate change and environmental disasters.
Construction sites, siding, traffic interventions, and signs with the inscription "Capital of COP30" can be seen all over the city.
“There are more than 30 structural projects underway in Belém, carried out by the federal government together with the city and state governments of Pará. The investments have a reason and a meaning. We are providing infrastructure for a wonderful city that will have a great legacy,” said Valter Correia, COP30's extraordinary secretary.
Linked to the Civil House of the Presidency of the Republic, the Extraordinary Secretariat for COP-30 was created by the government in March 2024 to coordinate the preparation of the Amazon to host COP30.
Hotel expansion
However, to cope with the magnitude of the conference, which is expected to welcome more than 60,000 people, including heads of state, diplomats, businesspeople, investors, activists, journalists, and delegations from the 193 member countries, one sector has to face the challenge of more than doubling in size: the hotel industry.
“Belém's hotel industry is in full swing. All the hotels are undergoing renovations to cater for COP30,” said the president of the Brazilian Hotel Industry Association of Pará (ABIH-PA), Antônio Santiago, in an interview with Agência Brasil.
“The main challenge is still to increase the number of existing beds,” said the president of ABIH-PA, which expects to welcome 40,000 visitors to the city.
Santiago said that the capital currently has 18,000 hotel beds and hopes to arrive at COP30 with between 45,000 and 50,000, where a double bed counts as two beds.
According to Santiago, with the opening of hotels, the number of beds should reach 22,000. Belém will gain three high-standard hotels built by international groups for the A and B public. One of them will be in the Porto Futuro II area, another in an old building that belonged to the Federal Revenue Service, and the third in Castanhal, outside the capital but in the metropolitan region.
Alternatives
Negotiations are underway with virtual platforms such as Airbnb and Booking to register properties and increase the supply of rooms available for the COP30 period. In addition, two ocean liners will serve as floating hotels with 5,000 beds.
Seventeen public schools will be transformed by the Pará government into temporary hostels. “With all this, we hope to reach 22,000 more beds,” said Santiago. Approximately 2,500 people are currently employed in the sector. “For COP30, we expect to hire 40% more workers.”
According to the association's president, neighboring towns within a 150-kilometer radius should also be in demand for hotel rooms.
According to the Extraordinary Secretariat for COP30, R$224 million has been earmarked by state-owned Itaipu for the construction of Vila Líderes, which will provide around 500 rooms of five-star standard. The accommodation will cater for part of the delegations, and after COP30, the site will function as the state government's administrative center.
The federal government has also allocated R$100 million through the General Tourism Fund (resources from the Ministry of Tourism) to improve the quality of hotels and tourism services.
The government of Pará told Agência Brasil that it had encouraged the modernization of the hotel chain by exempting the sector from the Tax on the Circulation of Goods and Services (ICMS) for purchases of items such as minibars, televisions, air conditioning, and furniture.
Antônio Santiago, from ABIH-PA, projects that the COP will leave Belém's hotel chain with a legacy of a better-prepared workforce and new hotel developments of excellence.
Movement
COP30 will be held in November 2025, but Belém and its hotels are already experiencing an increase in traffic. According to Santiago, since the beginning of the year, the city's hotel occupancy rate has risen from 50% to 82% on average.
On December 15, the Minister of Tourism, Celso Sabino, was at Belém airport to celebrate the record of 3.9 million passengers in 2024, about 8% more than in the same period in 2023.
According to the ministry, the International Airport can handle up to 7.7 million passengers a year, “a scenario which, with the necessary adaptations, will provide a satisfactory service for visitors to Belém during COP30”.
Urban Legacy
The main COP30 activities will take place in the City Park and the Hangar Convention Center, which are connected and located in the Souza neighborhood, about a 20-minute drive from Belém International Airport.
The City Park occupies the site of a former airport and is still under construction, with around 70% of the work completed. After the conference, the park will be handed over for use by the population. The final project includes preserved green areas, an artificial lake, sports facilities, an aviation museum, a creative economy center, and a gastronomic boulevard.
The federal government's investment in preparations for the Climate Change Conference amounts to R$4.7 billion. The interventions carried out jointly with the state and municipal administrations, are aimed at urban infrastructure, security, sustainability, transport, and mobility, such as the completion of the Metropolitan BRT (a fast bus system on exclusive lanes), the widening of roads and the construction of four viaducts.
Rua da Marinha, in the COP30 area, will be widened from two to six lanes. “The work will benefit the population of six neighborhoods, freeing up traffic and improving mobility,” says a statement sent out by the Pará government.
Evaluation
Professor Roberta Menezes Rodrigues, from the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), believes that any investment the city will receive “tends to be viewed very favorably.”
“Belém is a capital, but it's a city that has huge deficits in terms of infrastructure and quality of housing. It's a city in the northern region that has always been relegated to the background in terms of investment, especially in the area of urban infrastructure,” she said.
The professor's assessment of Belém's housing is confirmed by the 2022 Census of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), which showed Belém as the urban concentration with the highest proportion of inhabitants living in slums (57.1%).
Rodrigues, who is taking part in research funded by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) on the legacy of COP30, believes that it is still too early to be clear on the subject.
“Talking about legacy now, in fact, is talking about doubts,” said Rodrigues, who already sees a contradiction between the interventions being made in the city and the paths that should be followed precisely to achieve sustainable environmental development.
“As much as we have major investments taking place in the city, part of them are still tied to a logic of investments and forms of intervention of this model that we are questioning,” he pointed out.
“We are opening up more roads and highways, deforesting the few green areas left in the city and prioritizing, for example, individual transport, the car, instead of prioritizing public transport.”
The professor recognizes that the city will gain important assets in terms of infrastructure, places like the City Park, and cultural facilities. “Belém has never seen so much investment happening at the same time,” she said.
However, she warns that some initiatives may favor real estate development in certain areas rather than benefiting the population in general. In some cases, people have even faced eviction, she says, referring to families who used to live on Avenida Tamandaré, where the Linear Park is being built.
“It's a type of investment that is closely linked to real estate development.”
Environmental legacy
Professor Lise Vieira da Costa Tupiassu Merlin, from UFPA's Institute of Legal Sciences, highlights the fact that the most important international event on the environment is being held in an Amazonian city. “There is currently a great deficit of Amazonian protagonism in climate discussions.”
“Although the whole world recognizes the importance of the Amazon in the fight against climate change, solutions and debates are almost always shaped without the participation of people from the region.”
For the professor, Belém was an appropriate choice to play this leading role because “it has the largest scientific institution in the Pan-Amazon, UFPA.” She also highlighted the “ancestral knowledge” of the local population.
Tupiassu Merlin added that, on the other hand, Belém is located in “a state that contains a large mosaic of socio-environmental conflicts, which contribute to the intensification of climate change.”
In Lise's opinion, increased protagonism depends on more strategic positioning of local actors “but also on a genuine willingness on the part of other actors to open up to a new perspective of climate justice.”
“COP30 will undoubtedly be an opportunity for this, but there is still a lot of work ahead of us to ensure that this opportunity turns into lasting benefits for the population,” she concluded.
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Translation Ana Cunha-Busch