Lisbon Airport: A study in how not to welcome guests

Opinion-editorial articles exist to raise issues, to make appeals, to present…opinions and to disseminate public awareness. Like any opinion, the content is as valid as the credibility of the author and can be taken seriously and considered, or simply disregarded as a rant. Take your pick. For those interested in contributing towards Portugal’s standing abroad, read on.

Photo: commons.wikimedia.org by Abhijeet Rane, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Порту (Oporto), Португалия

The issue

The issue is perfectly clear. While Lisbon airport has been expanded and upgraded, and while the services are efficient, what is clearly lacking is a system to welcome visitors, who pay to come to Portugal, and see them flow easily and comfortably through the airport from arrival to passport control to baggage reclaim and out to the taxis (this is another issue. I suggest getting an Uber).

What is quite apparent from any search on Google, such as “Queues at Lisbon Airport”, or “Chaos Lisbon Airport” is that the system in place is, to say the least, inadequate. Visits over the last few weeks from family members from various points of origin, without exception, entailed queues of at least two hours to get through passport control. This was the minimum. The waiting times ranged between two hours and six.

Six hours waiting in line, for elderly visitors, some with mobility problems, without the possibility of visiting the toilets, after a flight of 7 hours, being shouted at by airport officials “No, go there! There! There! There!There!” “If you don’t like it, go back home”!” and the like… is not the most emotionally intelligent way to convince people that Portugal is a hospitable destination and that the Portuguese are very hospitable, is it?

The problem

The problem is one, and one only. The Portuguese, and I speak as someone who has Portuguese nationality and who has lived in Portugal for nearly half a century, have a problem with accepting criticism and responsibility and acting upon it, in a mature, adult fashion. They prefer to block criticism with an idiotic “Well if you don’t like it, clear off!” which does nothing to address the origins of the call to attention and improve things; and further, they prefer to shun responsibility, passing the blame on to someone else. For the family of a victim, whose brains have been fried after pressing a button on a pedestrian crossing, imagine how distressing it is for nobody to claim responsibility, so that nobody pays compensation, perhaps until years and years later.

In the case of Lisbon airport, the latest excuse was the new software system. Answer: You test software systems before they are implemented. But the problem is not only this week and last week, this has been carrying on for years. This is the reason for this opinion editorial piece.

Question: Who is responsible? Why haven’t successive governments and departments done anything about it? They can’t? Well, what are they doing in Parliament?

Suggestioin: Send those responsible to, for example, Istanbul International Airport, complete with pencil and paper, to take notes and learn how to run and manage an airport. There are far more passengers there than at Lisbon and the lines flow freely, without insolence and the arrogance of power trippers whose only moments of satisfaction are exercised when wearing a uniform and taking their frustrations of their wonderfully interesting little lives out on visitors, who are too polite to tell them to go …. themselves.

Or else, if the current autthorities are incompetent, pass the management of the airport over to someone who has what it takes.

The wider issue

The wider issue is that Portugal is indeed a hospitable country and the people are indeed hospitable, in general. At present there is a nasty little wave of xenophobia among a minority but like all waves, this will pass when their leader retires and is not indicative of the people as a whole. If you survive the Airport Experience, the venues for tourists are varied, from beach to golf to hikes to bird watching, whale watching, dolphin watching, with the most varied scenery from beaches to mountains to plains, the volcanic Azores isles in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the magical Isles of Madeira and Porto Santo off Africa’s coast, and Continental Portugal where every city, even town and village, has something special to discover, be it a castle, be it gastronomy, a story, history, a museum, a cultural event, stunning countryside and in all cases, as I said, welcoming people.

The situation is not only a profound lack of respect to the visitors, who pay good money to come and who will pay good money firstly in the taxi service (another issue to be solved) and then in their board and lodging and entertainment as they enjoy their holiday. It is a profound insult to all those Portuguese who have invested in HORECA (Hotel accommodation, restauration and cafés, including bars), who have invested in creating interesting experiences for visitors, who have launched start-ups to promote Portuguese goods, who have worked hard in the travel industry and who spend their energies daily to make the visitors’ experience a good one.

And I take this utter lack of competence and respect personally. I take it as a personal insult.

So all the work that I have done over half a century, trying to create a positive image of Portugal abroad, trying to be a link between Portuguese students studying abroad and foreign students coming to Portuguese Universities, all the work I have done in my translations for Lisbon’s Museums, the books I have translated to promote Portuguese culture, the cultural bridges I established between Portugal and the CPLP countries here in Pravda and also in other publications, my work to foster positive news stories in the printed news magazine África Today, and many other areas of activity promoting Portugal, including song writing, including four Eurovision entries, all this effort and all this work is destroyed by the first, dreadful image of Portugal experienced by visitors to Lisbon Airport.

For those responsible, sit down, shut up, listen and do something about it, not just today but for the future. Create a space worthy of Portugal, worthy of the image the country and its people wish to present. If you cannot, then either learn how to (I could probably do a better job myself, for free) or else hire an administration that knows what it is doing because if you continue like this, Portugal won’t have any tourists at all (at least through Lisbon)

For reflection and to conclude, here are some quotations from some of the passengers over the last few weeks:

“OK I am NOT comeing back here again”

“What a prize s***hole!”

An elderly lady crying and then being shouted at by a rude apology of a human being in a uniform.

An elderly gentleman lying on the floor in agony.

Children crying

Crowds of people desperate

“Well, if this is Portugal, thank you very much”

“Why are they so rude? People told me they were and I didn’t believe them, but now…..”

“They couldn’t organise themselves out of a paper bag”

I would say, for those responsible, if this is how you want to stop foreigners coming, congratulations. Every one of those will tell the proverbial 70 people and with say 100.000 visitors over one month, that is a round seven million people, just in May, who will not be coming back or considering a holiday in Portugal.

The airport is an insult to everything I stand for and everything I have tried to do over the years and it is an insult to all those who have given their life and souls to promoting a pleasant and positive holiday experience for visitors.

Do something about it.

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey can be contacted at [email protected]