The tourism sector believes that summer will be positive, anticipating even results over 2024, but fears that the situation at airports, marked by images of large lines, can bring threats to the activity in the short term.
“Everything points to a summer in line with the growths already recorded in the first four months of this year (8.5% of guests; plus 9.2% of overnights; plus 12.6% of total profits),” Lusa Cristina Siza Vieira, executive vice president of AHP-Hotel Association of Portugal.
“We predict, by the way, a year of 2025 with results above 2024, forecast sustained with the data already collected: all indicators point to continued and consistent growth, being 2025 potentially better than 2024, both in the volume of guests and sleeping and in revenue,” he said.
The official also pointed out that summer predictions indicate “a job similar to that of previous years between the national and international market”, and “despite the growth of domestic tourism, the resident market is expected to represent about 30% of the overnight, while the international market will continue to dominate, with about 70%.”
Also Francisco Calheiros, president of the Portuguese Tourism Confederation (CTP), believes in a positive summer.
“We faced this summer very positively. The Easter period was once a good indicator,” he said, pointing out that, according to IA data, in April, “the tourist accommodation sector registered 2.9 million guests and 7.1 million overnight, which equals homologous increases of 8.5% and 9.2%, respectively.”
“They are, therefore, very good indicators for the summer that is avoid,” he said.
However, the situation of airports is worrying the associative leaders.
“Since mid -May, we have been living a critical situation on land at Portuguese airports that affects Lisbon and Faro above all,” said Cristina Siza Vieira.
“This critical situation is the biggest threat to the operation in the short term (I say ‘short’ because, we are in believing, it will surely be resolved in the brief stretch), as we know, affects passengers from flights from country outside Europe or Schengen and which have a great weight for national tourism, such as the US market,” he warned.
The executive vice president of recalled that the US market is the second largest “in guests and overnight in Portugal and the first to Lisbon (without any fall forecast, less this summer, given the reinforcement of areas, TAP and US companies)”.
For Cristina Siza Vieira this situation also constitutes a “bad image on the gateway to Portugal”.
Francisco Calheiros said, in turn, that “long lines currently mainly occurring at Faro and Lisbon airport, due to failures in the new electronic system responsible for documentary control, namely those who arrive from countries outside the European Union, it is a very worrying situation, especially at the doors of summer”.
The CTP, according to the president, has been meeting with the government, “demonstrating its concern to this serious problem” and has already “been assured that the problem will be resolved very briefly.”
The “expect it to be like this,” he said, since “this current reality of long waiting lines at airports to pass documentary control for those who arrive from outside the Schengen space negatively affect the image of a country that wants to affirm itself as a competitive, modern and efficient destination”.
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