Covid-19 crisis slashes Portugal’s tourism by 50% in March

  • ECO News
  • 30 April 2020

The effects of the coronavirus outbreak were felt mainly in March. In the third month of the year there was a 50% drop in the number of tourists.

The effects of the coronavirus outbreak were felt mainly in March and the figures prove this. In the third month of the year, according to the flash estimate by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), there was a 50% drop in the number of tourists.

The first cases of infection appeared in the country at the beginning of March and it was from that month onwards that the effects of the coronavirus began to be felt most acutely in the different sectors, especially tourism. In that third month of the year, the INE predicts that 701,000 guests stayed in tourist accommodation establishments, which represents a 49.4% drop compared to the same month last year.

Of this total, most came from outside, but it was the number of residents that decreased the most: there were 395,100 non-residents, 48.8% less than last year, and 306,000 residents, a 51.2% reduction.

These figures translate into a cut of 58.5% to 1.9 million overnight stays, due especially to the fall in overnight stays by non-residents, which fell by 59.2%, while those by residents fell by 56.9%. When it came to choosing where to stay, the Algarve and the Metropolitan Area of Lisbon (AML) were the preferred regions, while the Centre and AML saw greatest losses.