There is no doubt that Portugal is in the good graces of North American tourists and the numbers bought into it. In September, a new record for visitors from the United States to Portugal was broken, with more than 204,000 guests from this country arriving in Portugal. Data released yesterday by the National Institute of Statistics (INE) shows that this is the highest number of North American tourists ever recorded in the national tourism accounts. The United States was the country’s third outgoing market in the ninth month of the year, ahead of France and Germany and behind only the United Kingdom, with a total of 262,000 guests, and neighboring Spain, with 213,000 guests.
According to accounts, Portugal received more than 1.1 million North American tourists between January and September, about 200 thousand more compared to the same period in 2019. That is, this market already has a weight of almost 10% in tourism in Portugal and was responsible for a share of 2.6 million overnight stays out of a total of 38.8 million overnight stays in the year. “The bet that Turismo de Portugal has made on the North American market has, without a doubt, produced huge results. The Americans discovered us and they discovered us very strongly, it has been a logic of public-private partnership that has worked very well worked, it was a good bet,” emphasizes DN/Dinheiro Vivo, the executive vice president of the Associação da Hotelaria de Portugal (AHP).
The arrival of these tourists from across the Atlantic began to take hold in the last two years prior to the pandemic. In 2019 alone, this market increased by 52% compared to 2017, with 2.7 million guests staying overnight in tourist accommodations on the mainland and islands.
The uncertainty in the post-pandemic period pointed to a scenario of a slow recovery in intercontinental tourists, but visitors from the United States caught their breath and started breaking record arrivals as early as March. The CEO of the Pestana group emphasizes the presence of these tourists in the company’s activities this year and justifies the growth with the loyalty to the destination achieved in recent years. “For the North American market, Portugal did not exist until a few years ago. Portugal was a province of Iberia. This prominence that Portugal began to gain, in holiday resorts but also in urban destinations, such as Lisbon and Porto, increased the prominence of the country. We started to attract more tourists and now we are already known to Portuguese destinations in that market and have created some loyalty to the destination,” added José Theotónio.
Data from Turismo de Portugal, available through August, shows that Lisbon is the destination of choice for North Americans, with 1.1 million overnight stays recorded in the region in the first eight months of the year. In second place is the North region with 393 thousand overnight stays and the top three is completed by the Algarve, which received 258 thousand overnight stays from these tourists.
Overnight stays of foreigners still below 2019
Until September, Portugal had a total of 22.6 million guests and 61.3 million overnight stays. Overnight stays of foreigners are still 6.3% below the same pre-pandemic period. If it is true that markets such as the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany or France have not yet matched the share of national tourism they had in 2019, there are other issuing countries with growth rates above pre-pandemic levels. Reading the INE data, it is concluded that guests from Belgium, Ireland, Switzerland and Denmark have outperformed the 2019 figures collected up to September, as have tourists from the Czech Republic and Romania.
Rute Simão is a journalist for Dinheiro Vivo
Source: DN
