Portugal’s tourist activity keeps recovery in August

The tourist activity in the country continued to improve in August, with some of the pandemic-related restrictions lifted. Even so, the number of guests was 1.9 million, down 43.2% on the same period last year, according to data released by the National Statistics Institute (INE) this Thursday.

The number of overnight stays by residents, which represent about two-thirds of the total, fell by 2.4% in the eighth month of the year, compared with a fall of 30.8% in July. However, in some parts of the country, the numbers even increased compared to last year. This was the case in the Algarve (+9.0%), Alentejo (+4.0%) and Centro (+1.1%), according to INE.

As far as the guests are concerned, 1.3 million of them live in Portugal. This is a fall of only 4.7% compared to last year, while in July the decrease was 31.9%. On the other hand, the country only received 589,000 non-residents, 70.1% less than in August 2019.

Although there was already some recovery in international, August continued to be marked by a decline in all the main markets, although less pronounced than in the previous month. Among the biggest falls are visitors from China (-92.5%) and the United States (-93.2%), the countries most affected by the coronavirus.