The three-year-old Brazilian tourist office in London is being closed down tomorrow on orders from Brasilia. Not only was the office one of a rare handful representing South America here, but it was the most clued up.
Maybe the new government thinks that Brazil winning the World Cup produces sufficient publicity not to need one?
It takes more than a few mad Brazilian football fans blowing whistles and wiggling their hips on TV to boost tourism. It helps to have a tourist office that can tell people whether they really do need to take malaria pills before visiting the Amazon or if you can catch a taxi from Recife to Rio when you get off your charter flight (the distance between the two is 2,400 km - about 48 hours by bus).
The Brazilian tourist office stood out from the rest. Many tourist offices are a waste of time and their premium-rate information lines are a complete turn-off, but the Brazilian tourist office, although run on a limited budget, oozed passion and success.
Numbers of tourists travelling from the UK increased by 22 per cent to 120,000 in its lifespan and the number of tour operators featuring this country, which is half the land mass of South America, increased by dozens.
Chris Pickard, who set up and directed the Brazilian tourist office in London in April 2000, is exceptional in his field. A former journalist with 15 years' experience as a foreign correspondent in Rio, author of guide books and official biographer of Ronnie Biggs, there is little he can't tell you about Brazil.
When I first became interested in South America in the 1980s it was commonly referred to as the 'sleeping giant of tourism'. And you know what? Fifteen years later it still is.
The British public can't get enough of South America, especially with the Iraq War and Sars putting travel to other continents in a less alluring light. Observer readers are particularly keen on Latin holidays. Chile, Ecuador, Brazil, Costa Rica and Argentina all feature in our travel awards' top 10 favourite long-haul countries. Yet, obtaining reliable information on things such as bus timetables, capoeira schools or decent B&Bs will now be a challenge. Letters have poured into Brazil from the trade begging for the tourist office to stay open. Yet to no avail.
The tourism ministry in Brasilia is full of people who used to work for convention and visitors' bureaux who think spending their budget on woo ing conferences to grimy old Sao Paulo will make Brazil richer. The new socialist government doesn't seem to realise that most European tourists to Brazil travel around independently, spending in local bars, frequenting family-run pousadas and hanging around small fishing villages pouring hard currency directly into the poorer end of society.
The trouble is that saying you're going to increase scruffy backpackers doesn't exactly have the same ring to it as saying you are going to bring thousands of boring businessmen from neighbouring countries. This is all about rewinning elections, not helping make poor Brazilians richer.
