Portuguese trips abroad break record | Tourism

In 2023, trips made by residents in Portugal grew by 4.6% and reached a total of 23.7 million. While trips within the national territory increased by 2.4%, Portuguese trips abroad rose 21.5%, “reaching a historic high”, highlighted the National Statistics Institute (INE) this Friday.

Spain, France and Italy once again occupied the top three positions as the main destinations for out-of-town travel, with respective shares of 41.6%, 10.1% and 6.9% in total, according to data from the Tourist Demand of the Residents. “Travel within the European Union represented 79% of total trips abroad”, representing an increase of 22% compared to the previous year, indicated INE.

In the case of travel within Portugal, the North Region reinforced its second position as the main destination for residents last year, with an increase of 2.4 percentage points (pp), to 23.7% of the total. The Center continued to be the main tourist destination, concentrating 29.8% of demand, followed by the Metropolitan Area of ​​Lisbon (17.3%), Alentejo (13.4%), Algarve (12.5%) , Madeira (2.2%) and the Azores (1.2%).

While the North strengthened itself as a destination, the Algarve fell in residents’ preferences, with a drop of 0.9 percentage points compared to its position in 2022.

Looking only at the fourth quarter of last year, INE data indicates that residents took 5.1 million trips (2.9% more year-on-year, but still less than the 5.5 million trips made at the end of 2019, before the pandemic crisis). Of these trips, 4.5 million (87% of the total) were within Portugal. But trips abroad also rose in the last months of the year, to around 684 thousand, increasing 12.9%.

Trips are shorter

What fell slightly was the average duration of trips, both in the quarter and for the year as a whole. In the last three months of last year, each trip lasted an average of 3.29 nights, compared to 3.30 in the fourth quarter of 2022. In total for 2023, each trip had an average length of 4.08 nights , compared to 4.18 nights in 2022.

The reason “leisure, recreation or vacation” justified 47.2% of trips made within the national territory and 68% of trips abroad and INE highlights that trips for “professional or business” reasons registered the biggest decrease compared to the pre- -pandemic: fell 13.8% compared to 2019 in quarterly terms and 15.5% for the year as a whole. Even so, compared to 2022, professional trips increased by 1% in quarterly terms (and were 8.7% of the total) and 4.9% in annual terms (reaching 7.2% of the total).

As for accommodation, INE states that the “’free private accommodation’ modality has reinforced its importance in overnight trips” by residents. Thus, accommodation in a second home or with family or friends was the main option for 73.1% of overnight stays in the fourth quarter (plus 3.4 pp), that is, more than 12 million overnight stays, followed by the option “ hotels and similar”, which accounted for 19.7% of overnight stays (3.3 million).

In 2023, overnight stays in “free private accommodation” corresponded to 61.3% (61.1% in 2022) and increased by 2.3%. “Hotels and similar” accounted for 23.6% of total overnight stays, while “private paid” accommodation represented 11.% of the total.