Hotel business earned one billion euros from January to May
Between January and May, the Portuguese hotels increased the number of guests to 7.3 million, which corresponds to over 19 million overnight stays.
Portuguese tourism accommodations surpassed one million euros in earnings during the first five moths of 2017. Between January and May, the number of guests and overnight stays continued increasing more than 10%.
All in all, according to INE’s data, from January to May, the Portuguese hotel business received 7.3 million guests, corresponding to 19.3 million overnight stays. These numbers correspond to a 10.4% increase in both cases. The occupancy rate increased 3.6 percentage points to 43.6%, while the average income per available room rocketed almost 20%, standing at 36.9 euros.
Considering May, the hotel business invoiced close to 2 million guests and there were 5.4 million overnight stays, numbers which correspond to a 7.9% and a 7.2% increase, respectively. There was an expressive deceleration in comparison to April’s growths, which is explained by the fact that Easter was in April, while in 2016, it was in March.
The hotel business got a total of 1,037 million euros between January and May of 2017, 19.4% more than in the same period of 2016.
Pope’s visit strengthens the Center
The Portuguese center had the largest increase concerning the amount of overnight stays in mainland Portugal. Because of Pope Francis’ visit to the Shrine of Fátima in May, to celebrate the Centennial of Our Lady’s Apparitions, overnight stays in the region increased by 15.3%: 1.8 million overnight stays between January and May.
The Lisbon region had the second largest increase in the number of overnight stays to a total of 5.2 million euros in the first five months of 2017 (a close to 13% increase).
