Rio de Janeiro needs to enhance its skills as a host

Chosen by The New York Times and the travel guide Lonely Planet “the best tourist destination of 2013”, Rio de Janeiro has been compelled to enhance its skills as a host.

Finally there is an ongoing series of measures aimed at improving the life of tourists, such as increasing the refurbishment of Galeão Airport and hotels along the beach. Eight new tourist information center are going to be opened during 2014 by RioTur, the Secretary of Tourism.

Distributed at strategic points, the information centers have joined six other. To assess mastery of other languages by the officials, questions were asked in English.

In all standard addresses five questions were asked: Where is located the new Museum of Image and Sound? What is the price of the taxi to Galeão airport? How do you get to the Chinese view? Where is the headquarters of Cacique de Ramos carnival block? Which cultural program would you reccommend? Overall, the staff were attentive, but the goodwill could not cover up the fact that the service still needs several adjustments in terms of fluency in other languages.

The worst result was at the local airport Santos Dumont. During the Spanish test, the clerk was startled at the question “Hablas español?” and reacted with an accent that was an attack on the language of Cervantes. When notice it was not understood, she then advised in good Portuguest, the person to search for Infraero kiosk, “where employees speak English”.

In another situation, a couple wanted to know how much it costs a taxi to Barra da Tijuca, and the same girl answered: ” Very expensive. Around 200 Reais. The awkward part of this situation is that in front of the clerk, there was a table showing the value of 75 Reais for the path til Barra da Tijuca.