Portugal: the recovery of tourism

After three months with little hope, June was a month in which tourism slowly witnessed a recovery. With many borders closed, the investment in internal travel increased and the Portuguese got to know Portugal even better. With this, the recovery of tourism went through a phase of improvement, which brought good prospects for the near future.

If the Portuguese enjoyed the country during the month of June, many nationalities such as Germans, Spaniards, Dutch and Swiss crossed the borders and landed in Portugal to enjoy the good weather in July and August. Besides the beginning of the summer, this significant demand from foreigners was also a consequence of Portugal having been considered one of the safest post-coronavirus destinations. We wrote an article about this. Missed it? Take a look here!

Naturally, with the summer, the Algarve region was much sought after by the Portuguese. But unlike popular opinion, according to the National Statistics Institute (INE), in July the Alentejo suffered the least from the reduction in tourism – compared to the same period in 2019. According to the data presented, the Alentejo region had a year-on-year fall of 25.8% in the number of overnight stays, the lowest in the country. This shows that the recovery of tourism is increasingly evident.

On the other hand, according to INE data, Madeira was the island that suffered the most from the recovery, as it registered a decline of 86.8%. The data proves that in addition to the increase in domestic tourism, the Portuguese enjoyed the country by car, train or bus, avoiding the use of planes to make their holiday trips.

Also according to the data published by INE, in July 2020 the tourist accommodation sector registered 1 million guests and 2.6 million overnight stays, corresponding to negative year-on-year variations of 64.0% and 68.0% respectively, after June’s falls of 82.0% and 85.2% in the same order. This recovery in tourism is mainly due to residents, whose overnight stays reached 1.7 million and represented 65.5% of the total.

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LovelyStay data

LovelyStay, a leading company in the short-term rental sector in Portugal, manages over 300 properties throughout the country and had an occupancy rate of over 70% in its flats in July and over 80% in August, which reinforces the idea that the sum of pricing strategy with a specialized team, can bring about important results for the recovery of tourism.