Portugal’s airports management company ANA – Aeroportos de Portugal rakes in record €1.267Bn thanks to tourism

The company that manages Portugal’s airports, ANA – Aeroportos de Portugal, enjoyed record revenues of €1.267Bn on the back of the country ’s bumper tourism numbers.

The business turnover at the company that is held by the Vinci Group, was up 16% in 2024 – a year that saw 69 million passengers pass through its four main airports at Lisbon, Porto, Faro, and Funchal on the island of Madeira.

According to ANA, Lisbon’s Humberto Delgado Airport represented around 50% of all passengers that came into Portugal last year, therefore representing half of the total revenues.

At the same time as ANA posted record revenues, the company is also preparing to slap on higher airport taxes, saying it needs to do this to help pay for Lisbon’s new Luís de Camões Airport at Alcochete which will be ready later in the next decade when the current airport will be phased out.

However, the Portuguese Association of Travel Agencies (ANAV) says ANA’s suggestion that it would have to annually increase airport taxes between 2026 and 2030 with the aim of “achieving a revenue per passenger that passes through the passenger terminals (RRMM) of €23.37, is “unacceptable”.

ANAV says large private investments should be made using specific mechanisms for this purpose and not at the expense of market competitiveness, to consider that this ANA proposal is against the logic of investment, which involves “investing today to reap income tomorrow”, especially when the objective, according to ANA’s press release, will be getting the full amount of the investment today.

On the other hand, the Association notes that this proposal would mean loss of part of Portugal’s competitiveness as a tourist destination and this is totally against the interests of the tourism sector.

And to back this up it says, “despite the good results from national tourism, the tax burden and contextual costs make Portugal less and less competitive in international markets”, adding that, “currently, Lisbon’s airport taxes are already more expensive, on average 30%, than those practiced by Madrid, and since Portugal is a peripheral country, this charge would be very noticeable” it states. In other words hiking costs would reduce Lisbon’s competitiveness as a tourist destination even more.

Last summer, the number of foreign tourists visiting Portugal rose 5.3% to a monthly record of 2.3 million in August, making it the busiest summer season on record for arrivals, data from the National Statistics Institute (INE) showed.

However, there was good news from ANA that said the project for the new airport was well received by the Portuguese government, according to a statement from the French conglomerate Vinci Airports.