Tourism revenues down 50% for 2021

The Government believes that Portugal will close 2021 with around half of the tourism revenues achieved in the record year of 2019.

The belief was backed up by the Minister for the Economy, Pedro Siza Vieira who said “now is the time to lick wounds and ensure scars heal quicker”.
“Now that tourism is recovering, there is the possibility of achieving the product value that we had in 2019 more rapidly, and this trend will happen because we knew how to make the sector trendy,” said the minister on Thursday during the 32nd Hotel and Tourism Congress which ended today (Friday, 12 November).
“This year, tourism revenues will be down 50% on 2019, but no other sector in Portugal is as well prepared to face the challenges of the future which are around the corner”, said Pedro Siza Vieira at the opening of the Congress whose slogan was “Tourism has a Future”.
“We are seeing a growth in tourism which is above what we had expected a few months back, despite there still being some constraints on the supply side. We’re on the right path, with signs of the economy growing robustly in the EU” he said.
But the minister also warned that in the eyes of the EU there “is a risk because Portugal doesn’t have a Sate budget approved”. Another problem he highlighted was the “profitability of the companies in the sector” and the current fuel crisis which is “making energy more expensive and has to be well-managed”.
The AHP president, Raul Martins warned that the next few months until Easter would be “very difficult”.
The hotel sector would require aid because cash-flow would get worse. “There were many hotels that opened their doors in 2018 and 2019 that are in debt”, he said, lamenting a lost opportunity when a government proposal to replace automatic extension of moratoria by a State credit guarantee of 25% that had been negotiated was turned down by the banks.
Raul Martins also called on the Government to speed up aid measures that had already been announced such as the treasury credit line of €150 million which will, according to minister Siza Vieira, only be available at the end of November.