Brazil, five time winner of the FIFA World Cup and the world’s official top ranking team, is putting behind its disappointment in this year’s tournament and relishing the opportunity to host the World Cup tournament in 2014.
The event has not been held in Brazil since 1950 and preparations to host this mammoth event are well underway and it is hoped it will leave a lasting legacy in Brazil, a country for which football is a way of life.
‘The 2014 World Cup will be a great opportunity for Brazil to showcase itself to the world,’ said Felipe Cavalcante, president of ADIT Brasil, the government-funded association for inward investment in real estate and tourism.
‘It is anticipated that Brazil will spend $US50 billion on various projects in the 12 host cities. In comparison, Germany needed to spend just $US12 billion to prepare for the 2006 World Cup. So getting Brazil ready for the World Cup is a big project and huge challenge which we are looking forward to,’ he explained.
‘The World Cup has given Brazil a focus for its projects and a fixed deadline. But I believe that Brazil’s economic growth and tourism and investment potential would be strong even if we weren’t hosting such a prestigious event. The 12 host cities are also the 12 major cities of Brazil so they would have naturally attracted investment and development,’ he added.
Many of ADIT Brasil’s members are working with international investors on projects that are expected to benefit from the World Cup effect. This includes infrastructure projects, agreements with hotel chains for expansion into host cities, retail and manufacturing projects. At its annual conference in May, over 120 foreign investors met with Brazilian companies to agree an anticipated R$1.8 billion of business.
FIFA rules state for the host nation that no more than one city may use two stadiums and the number of host cities is limited to between eight and ten. Brazil appealed to FIFA and unusually it has been allowed to use twelve host cities, due to the sheer size of the country. These cities are: Belo Horizonte, Brasília, Cuiabá, Curitiba, Fortaleza, Manaus, Natal, Porto Alegre, Recife, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and São Paulo.
Although it is widely anticipated that the final will be held in the existing Maracanã stadium in Rio, which hosted the final back in 1950, many new stadiums will need to be built and all of the existing ones will need to be upgraded to cope with additional capacity. New stadiums will need to be built in Cuiabá, Manaus, Natal and Recife. The Fonte Nova stadium in Salvador is scheduled to be rebuilt.
Millions more is to be spent on infrastructure including a high speed train connecting Campinas, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, likely to cost R$11 billion and a $US2.8 billion investment plan to upgrade airports of ten of the venue cities, increasing their capacity and the comfort of the hundreds of thousands of tourists expected for the Cup.
Jeanine Pires of Brazil’s state tourism organisation Embratur says that Brazil plans to make the most of the World Cup to spread information on the country with a view to attracting more visitors. As the games will be played in a number of locations, Brazil will have the opportunity to showcase many of its major cities to tourists and property investors. Property ownership in Brazil has recently been triggered by plans for the development of a new international airport in the north and will be operational by 2014, boosting accessibility to Natal.
‘Our target is to reach 2014 with 65 tourist destinations highly qualified to supply tourists and 10 million foreign visitors a year,’ said Luiz Barreto, the Brazilian minister of Tourism.
A study by hotel consultancy specialists HVS Consulting & Valuation and Newmark Knight Frank predicts that over 7,200 new units for second residences will be built in Brazil by 2014 as well as over 7,600 new rooms in resorts and hotels.
