Introducing licensed tourism property #12511
Well that was easy.
After months of waiting and hoping and begging and pushing, of sleepless nights and stressful days, our reaction was… understated when the email came through.
We’d roped in a trade organisation to help us bother and worry the town hall decision makers and were told everything seemed on track and a decision would be delivered on the Friday or the Monday.
Friday nervously came and went as a warning that unrequited expectations can put a cloud over a weekend.
But on the Monday morning the letter from our local camâra – or town hall – dropped into our inbox, and as usual was written in a way that needed translation, interpretation, further consideration and expert reassurance before we could believe what we thought we could see.
“Regarding the above-mentioned matter and for all due effects, I am obliged by order of the Councillor dated March 14th 2025…”
Yes…do go on…
“After a classification audit, a copy of Report No. 25/25 of which is attached…”
Yes, yes..?
“To inform Your Excellency,” yes-yes-yes, that’s definitely me, “that the Tourist Enterprise called Vale das Estrelas…meets the conditions to be classified
as Tourism in Rural Areas – COUNTRY HOUSES.”
No need to shout. Wait, what? So that’s it then?
Has anything else been slipped into the five pages of ifs and buts that says in some convoluted way how this will only come to pass after we have provided x and y additional documents?
No? Really?
OK.
In this way, played out in real time, was the anatomy of an anticlimax.
“The number,” we both remembered. “Now we need the number.”
We’d like to think we’re not just a number, but in terms of opening to the general public… of getting the quantity of people through the door we need to pay back our loans and pay staff we haven’t got yet… everything is about the tourism number.
We are just a number.
How many weeks, we wondered, would it take to get that?
The Monday afternoon was rainy and not packed with optimism as we dived into the Turismo de Portugal online portal and started filling things in.
We called a few times for guidance… and a nice woman picked up pretty much straight away… every time.
But the last call irritated her.
“Yes…of course,” she said sternly. But we repeated the question anyway: “So that’s our number? Our actual tourism number? The number we need to open to the public, to list on AirBnB, to run our business?”
“Yes of course…is there anything else?”
There wasn’t.
There was just a number. One. Two. Five. One. One.
Not the snappiest, nor the most symmetrical, but it was ours and it was beautiful. Our. Own. Number.
Finally, licensed…to bill.
We reached for the champagne as we had some other numbers to celebrate.
It was St Patrick’s Day – and the 15th anniversary of Ana and I getting together.
1, 2, 5, 1, 1…17, 3, 2010…15. Pink Portuguese espumante. Nice.
And then a different kind of work began.
It turns out you not only have to build an off-grid eco-luxe tourist lodge, but you have to actually get people to come here and stay if you want to pay off your loans.
Apparently people don’t just appear – they have to find out about the place first – and so begins a crash course in marketing.
We’ve rented out places short term before, but getting seven units nicely presented and published on Booking.com and AirBnB wasn’t the most straightforward of tasks, and I’m quite good at computers.
After digging through three years of photos, it took the best part of three days to go add pictures, and navigate different included or excluded fees and taxes to set prices that match our needs but aren’t too much for the visiting public.
There’s quite a bother around setting the right price – valuing the silence and the views and all the work that’s gone into building something beautiful, but also learning as we’re doing and so offering “soft opening” prices.
Ana’s approach has simply been to draw a red line and make sure every visitor’s expectations are exceeded when they arrive – rather than the other way around.
It has been relatively easy to do, as it’s really hard to properly capture the scale of the views and the feeling of the place through photographs.
We’re lucky to have @ciajansen as our friend – Cia is a fantastic interior design photographer and she’d been waiting for a gap in the rain and the return of a little sunshine to take some bright photos of our rooms.
We’ve been planning our website for more than a year, but weren’t allowed to publish it, or promote our property until we had our number.
The hoped-for but largely unexpected speed at which the permission to open was granted took us a little by surprise.
But in the break between storms she did an amazing job – I hope you like them.
So in celebration I renamed the blog Off Grid and OPEN in Portugal…we’re still ignorant, but we’re learning fast.
Some of you reading this column will have followed our progress for more than a year, others a little less, but it’s a major milestone to be able to say we’re finally open for business… and just in time for the holiday season.
Thank you for your support… all the comments and encouragement has really helped… and if you or anyone you can think of might like to come and visit to see what all the fuss is about, please check out our new website www.valedasestrelas.pt or www.valleyofthestars.co.uk, get in touch and spread the love.
And there’ll certainly be plenty more to write about as this journey continues to unfold.
