Decline in British visitors slows Portugal's tourism growth rate

The growth rate of tourism, Portugal’s economic lifeblood, has been logged at the slowest since 2012.

Tourism is still growing, with the number of guests reaching new highs, but a slowdown is evident and concerning as much of the economic forecasting is based in straight line increases.

Despite a record number of guests, the increase is the lowest in six years with the number overnight stays remaining level, a situation not seen since 2009.

In the first nine months of 2018, hotels received more than 16.5 million guests, a new record reported by the National Statistics Institute.

But this number represented an increase of 1.33% over the same period last year, reflecting the lowest year-on-year growth rate since 2012, when the number of guests fell 1.42%.
 
As for the number of overnight stays, in the first nine months, more than 46.12 million were recorded, 0.53% fewer than in 2017. This is the first time this indicator has fallen since 2009, when overnight stays decreased by 7.5%.

It should be noted that 2009 was the first post crash year after the crash of Lehman Brothers triggered worldwide economic problems, followed by years of economic austerity.

The main problem is the decline in visitors from the UK. Some 81,000 fewer Brits visited Portugal this year so far, down 9.7% in the year to September. This is down to pre-Brexit concerns, a poorly performing pound and cheaper sunshine destinations coming back on stream. In 2016, visitors from the UK accounted for 21% of guests and 28% of overnight stays in hotels in Portugal.

On the plus side are the North Americans (+ 20.6%), Canadians (+ 16.8%) and Brazilians (+ 11.0%) but the British represent Portugal’s biggest source of tourists so in real terms, a near 10% drop represents serious damage to the figures.

To add some zing to the market, while guaranteeing some cheery headlines, Portugal Prime Minister today announced the Capitalizar Turismo programme, “worth €130 million, to finance the creation and re-establishment of tourism projects," with an emphasis on environmental sustainability.

António Costa said that upto €40,000 for individual projects will be allocated exclusively to small and medium-sized companies to improve the management of their energy efficiency, intelligent use of water and improved management of their own waste.”

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