Long weekends: 2nd half of 2024 will have few long holidays

The next holiday, November 15, will be on a Friday and the following one, November 20 – which became a national holiday this year and celebrates Black Awareness Day – will be on a Wednesday. In other words, no holidays of more than three consecutive days.

For the president of the Federation of Commerce of Goods, Services and Tourism of the Federal District, José Aparecido da Costa Freire, a holiday on a working day “breaks the week” and is usually harmful to commerce.

“With the holiday on Saturday, businesses operate almost normally, and there are few activities that are closed. So people are free to go to tourist attractions and go on family outings, which I believe is a benefit. It is much better to have a holiday on Saturday than in the middle of the week,” says the president of Fecomércio-DF.

Roads and airports

On holidays that fall on weekends, there is no change in the flow of flights at the airports and the number of flights remains the same as normal periods. According to Inframerica, which manages Brasília-DF airport, on the next three holidays that fall on Saturdays, there will be no extra staff at the terminal and there is no forecast of more flights on the schedule.

The same goes for national highways, on long holidays — whether three or four days — the Federal Highway Police usually carry out special operations on the highways, which does not happen when there are holidays that fall on Saturdays or Sundays.

The head of the Federal Highway Police’s Accident Prevention and Response Coordination, Paulo Guedes, explains that on holidays lasting three days or longer, when people “join” them, the number of accidents increases, for several reasons. The main one is lack of attention.

“Most traffic accidents occur when the driver is inattentive for some reason. We have many serious accidents caused by vehicles that enter the road without observing the presence of other vehicles, in other words, it is pure lack of attention.”

For the PRF coordinator, these are accidents caused without the driver intending to break the rules. “He wasn’t drinking, he was worried about his car, but he wasn’t paying attention,” warns Guedes.

Inattention can be caused by several reasons, but one of them stands out: the cell phone.

Service sector

According to the Brazilian Association of Bars and Restaurants, Abrasel, the greatest impact of holidays on Saturday falls mainly on coastal cities, explains Abrasel’s content leader, José Eduardo Camargo.

“Because many people who would work on the weekend don’t go to work and can, for example, go to nearby cities on the coast. This is the case of São Paulo, for example, which ends up having a positive impact on Baixada Santista and other coastal cities.”

While travel may be impacted by fewer extended holidays, the services sector is not feeling the impact, says economist André Galhardo from Análise Econômica de São Paulo. He points out that around 70% of Brazil’s GDP comes from the services sector.

“When you have a booming job market — as the Brazilian one is at the moment — with the lowest unemployment rate in the entire historical series and with a solid and significant increase in the wage bill, when you take a break, you don’t produce, but you end up impacting other sectors. One thing can balance, adjust and reduce the impact of the other,” he says.