LISBON (Reuters) – The number of foreign tourists visiting Portugal exceeded pre-pandemic levels in July for the first time since the covid-19 restrictions ended, information from the National Institute of Statistics (INE) showed on Wednesday.
More than 1. 8 million foreigners stayed in Portuguese hotels last month, up from 600,000 a year ago, when the country still had restrictions, and just over 1. 78 million in July 2019, a record year for tourism.
Portugal’s tourism sector accounted for only about 15% of gross domestic product before the pandemic that erupted in early 2020 and paralyzed the entire world.
However, the cumulative number of foreign visitors in the first seven months of the year, at 8. 1 million, is still around one million less than in the same era of 2019.
Visitors from neighboring Spain accounted for the highest percentage of total arrivals in July with 285,900, followed by Britain and the United States, which have recently become a tourist destination in Portugal.
Tourism has recovered thanks in particular to Portugal’s location in the far southwest of Europe, far from the war raging in Ukraine, and to the general belief of other people as a place. However, the sector faces the same difficult situations of staff shortages and runaway inflation. at most other European countries.
(Reporting by Patrícia Vicente Rua; Editing by Andrei Khalip and Chizu Nomiyama)