Society

Local businesses are ready to greet Xmas shoppers with amazing street lights and decorations, discounts and coupons

  • Article

    Article

Porto City Hall will hand out 150 thousand discount vouchers to the city traders to compensate them for the pandemic distress. As such, for each 20 euros spent in street trading, traditional trade and local trade, customers will be granted a 2-euro direct rebate.

Surpassing these unprecedented times will be an uphill battle due to the constraints and restriction on the circulation of people and mandatory curfews. As such, Porto City Hall prepared an incentive programme to boost the economic activity in the city. The programme shall be voted by the Municipal Executive on 7th December, but Mayor Rui Moreira has announced it, yesterday evening, while strolling in downtown Porto to check the Xmas lightings, accompanied by the president of the Association of Traders of Porto, Joel Azevedo.

And truth be told, one can only feel the holiday spirit with the city’s streets decorated with lights and ornaments. Thousands of twinkling light bulbs will help beat the holiday blues, and don’t we all need it so bad, this year? There are 82 streets, squares, gardens and avenues in Porto that will cheer spirits and invite to shop local while strolling and appreciating the Christmas magic.

The “Programa de Incentivo à Atividade Comercial” aka “Incentive Programme to Commercial Activity” (free translation), which will be on during this holiday season, meaning Xmas and New Year, is exclusively targeted at local business with doors facing the street and with a surface of up to 250 square meters.

This is an extraordinary investment of 300 thousand euros, as the Municipality of Porto “takes over the 2-euro rebate in purchase equal or greater than 20 euros, and so on and so forth – in multiples of 20 euros”, in retail business that are included in the programme. Access rules and contitions will be disclosed soon.

Shopping local also provides the perfect opportunity to see the amazing Christmas lights and decorations in downtown Porto.

“This year, the Xmas lights and decorations contracting process was with the Association of Traders of Porto. This is something that was not done for quite some time now, and we went back to doing it because there’s no one better than the Association of Traders to grasp what are the necessities, the places, the type of lighting that suits best each street, and we can see that it is really amazing; in fact, I have received many messages from people telling me this much”, affirmed Rui Moreira, who was touring the streets accompanied by councillor Catarina Araújo, the chairperson of the Board of the municipal company Ágora – Cultura e Desporto, and the councillor for Economy, Tourism and Trade, Ricardo Valente.

The Christmas lights and decorations contracting process was signed with the Association of Traders of Porto, and of contracted services the only item that was not fulfilled is the Xmas tree; as such the amount referring to the tree will be granted as financial support to the local business with another 12.500 discount vouchers to be handed out.

“This will enable merchants to apply grants without that being a burden”, as referred by the Mayor of Porto, Rui Moreira.

In addition, this huge Christmas campaign also adds the parking exemption fees in the city, per 120 minutes, in the four municipal parks: Trindade, Silo Auto, Duque de Loulé and Alfândega, which is granted upon presentation of the tickets handed out by the local merchants. Tickets can be used between 8th December and 8th January, up to the limit of 10.000 units.

The Municipality of Porto will launch, as well, a communication campaign to raise awareness on the importance of buying local, in a safely manner, to help the local economic activity better endure the hardship.

Don’t mingle, but jingle and be merry! Happy Xmas!