“It’s unfair to say Portugal has too many tourists” says tourism association boss

The number of overnight stays in Portugal’s hotels and other guest house accommodation is likely to have grown by between 1% and 3% for 2024 according to one of the country’s tourism bosses, Francisco Calheiros who heads the Confederation of Tourism of Portugal (APAVT). 

Overnight stays grew 4% in July while revenues were up by 11.6% which means that tourists are spending more on accommodation, including hotels compared to tourist numbers because accommodation prices have gone up says Francisco Calheiros, the President of the Confederation of Tourism of Portugal (APAVT).

These prices hikes have a lot to do with inflation and the recovery of some margins in certain sectors.

“From our perspective this means a growth for this year of somewhere between 3% while revenues will be fairly higher”, the tourism boss told the business daily Jornal de Negócios, exceeding the numbers for 2023.

Calheiros said it did not make sense to lower the prices of hotel rooms since Portugal continued to have a balanced price/quality ratio and that they compared favourably with other tourist destinations in the European market and “we continue to beat records every year.”

On the news sources programme ‘Conversa Capital’, Calheiros pointed out that tourism had grown year-on-year and that the number of Portuguese tourists had not fallen, as is sometimes mistakenly thought, but rather the number of overseas tourists has risen. However, he stressed that the importance of the Portuguese national tourist market was “decisive.”

But was there a sense of Portugal suffering from over-tourism in the way that had been seen in some other popular tourism destinations such as Barcelona in Spain?

“It’s become kind of chic to say there are too many tourists and remember that tourism represents around 15% of our GDP, so I think it is very unfair to say this about tourism and all agree, from the Bank of Portugal to the political parties, that tourism has been the driver of the Portuguese economy”, he said.