Tourist trips by residents in Q3 2021 highest since start of pandemic

  • Lusa
  • 27 January 2022

According to Statistics Portugal (INE), tourist travel by residents in Portugal and abroad increased 21.3% YoY in the third quarter of 2021.

Tourist travel by residents in Portugal and abroad increased 21.3% in the third quarter of 2021 year-on-year to the highest since the start of the pandemic, but remains 11.1% below 2019, according to Statistics Portugal (INE).

“In the third quarter of 2021, residents in Portugal made 7.7 million trips, which corresponded to an increase of 21.3% year-on-year (+83.9% in the second quarter of 2021), however, still below the figures recorded in the same quarter of 2019 (-11.1%, a period where 8.7 million trips were made),” INE advanced on Thursday.

In that period, 454,800 trips were made to foreign destinations (+180.9% compared to the third quarter of 2020; -57.2% compared to the third quarter of 2019), corresponding to 5.9% of the total (12.3% in the third quarter of 2019).

Domestic travel, meanwhile, grew by 17.1% (-4.6% compared to the third quarter of 2019) totalling 7.3 million trips, which corresponded to 94.1% of the total (-3.4 percentage points compared to 2020, but +6.4 percentage points compared to the same period of 2019).

“In both cases, the figures recorded in the third quarter of 2021 corresponded to the highest since the start of the pandemic,” INE highlights.

In the period under review, “leisure, recreation or holidays” remained the main motivation for travelling (5.4 million trips, +20.9% year-on-year; -6.2% compared to the third quarter of 2019), with its share having registered “a slight decrease” by 0.2 percentage points (to 69.8% of the total).

Conversely, “visiting family or friends” strengthened its share (25.0% of the total, +0.6 percentage points) and was the second main reason for the trips made (1.9 million trips, +24.4% year-on-year; -16.2% compared to the same period of 2019).

Trips for “business or professional” reasons (206,200) increased by 20.2% (-40.8% compared to 2019), with their preponderance unchanged (2.7% of the total).

“Hotels and similar” had 29.3% of overnight stays resulting from tourist trips in the third quarter of 2021, strengthening its share (+4.3 percentage points), but “free private accommodation” remained the main option (56.6% of overnight stays, -4.4 percentage points).

According to data from INE, the Internet was used in 25.3% of the cases (+0.6 percentage points), and this resource was an option in 65.4% (+4.8 percentage points) of the trips abroad and in 22.8% (-1.0 percentage point) of the domestic trips.

In the third quarter, each resident tourist slept, on average, 8.24 nights on trips made (-1.9% year-on-year; 8.41 nights in the third quarter 2020; 7.80 nights in the third quarter 2019).

The highest average duration was in August (9.26 nights).

The proportion of residents who made at least one tourism trip in the third quarter of 2021 was 39.4%, reflecting an increase of 6.6 percentage points compared to the same period of the previous year (42.3% in the third quarter of 2019).

This quarter, all months recorded year-on-year increases in terms of the percentage of residents who travelled (+3.1, +3.4 and +3.1 percentage points in July, August and September respectively).

However, compared to the third quarter of 2019, these proportions were still below levels for that period: -2.8 percentage points in July, -2.3 percentage points in August and -1.1 percentage points in September.