Porto and North of Portugal registers 1,138 million overnight stays in August
“ANDn August there were 1,138 million overnight stays in Porto and North, 56% of which were overnight stays from national tourists. Porto e Norte was less than 300,000 overnight stays compared to August 2019, achieving 80% of that total, which represents a sign that the recovery is having very positive effects in the region”, said today to Lusa, source of Tourism agency of Porto and North of Portugal (TPNP).
According to the president of TPNP, Luís Pedro Martins, the data for this summer until last August are a “clear sign of recovery and the hope that the year 2022 can be almost normal, with equal values, and may be close to those registered in the historic year 2019”.
“Data recorded in the summer months make us very optimistic about what the behavior of the remaining months of the year may be, with the reduction of restrictions on travel both in Portugal and in the outbound markets, namely Spain. We can see that foreign tourists already represent almost 50% of overnight stays in the region and, by the end of the year, they will even represent more than half of tourists visiting Porto and the North of Portugal, by the end of the year,” he said.
The number of overnight stays below 2019 is still due to some constraints, such as the obligation to perform quarantines after visiting Portugal in some source markets, such as Germany, Brazil, Canada and the USA, considered.
Between January and August, TPNP recorded “3.32 million overnight stays”, a value still far from the 7.2 million overnight stays in 2019, but with values ”much more positive than the 3,076 million overnight stays in 2020 “, considered Luís Pedro Martins.
In terms of average stay, Porto e Norte closes August with 2.04 nights, a figure already above the 2.01 in August 2019, which represents a “very positive” sign.
In May, summer bookings at hotels in the North region were returning “slowly but noticeably”, and the prospects were already more positive than in 2020, with an occupancy of 70% in some units expected .
At the time, the president of Tourism of Porto and North of Portugal, told Lusa that there was a “growing up of contacts and pre-reservations” for the summer and that the perspective was that the North would have “a better summer” than in 2020.
“In 2020, at that time, we registered interesting numbers, but we have indicators that this 2021 will be better, with the national market being predominant, but with the traditional markets reaching us with more force than last year and there are many reserves of ‘last minute’ [última hora], depending on the evolution of the pandemic,” said Luís Pedro Martins at the time.
According to the quarterly North Conjuncture of the North Regional Coordination and Development Commission (CCDR-N), to which Lusa had access, “the overnight stays of tourist tourists from the North were 1.1 million in the 2nd quarter of 2021, which compares with just 305 thousand in the same period of 2020”.
“Despite the growth, the value is still much lower than the number of overnight stays recorded in the 2nd quarter of 2019”, in a pre-pandemic period, when there were 1.8 million, “or 63% more than not 2nd quarter of the current year”, reference the same document.
CCM // CSJ
Portuguese / End