LCT said work would begin this month and take 14 to 15 months to finish.


The project’s architect, João Carrilho da Graça, said the new terminal was a small, simple and discrete building that was “environmentally friendly”.


Covering an area of about 13,000 square metres the building will be able to handle passengers from several ships at the same time and will have a rooftop restaurant, a cafeteria and a small shopping area with a post office and chemist’s shop.


LCT is going to pay Lisbon port authority a fixed fee of €300,00 a year plus €0.22 per passenger for the services it is provided (pilots and so on), which totaled about €2.5 million in 2013.


Lisbon currently welcomes 550,000 cruise passengers a year but the port authorities want to double that number over the next 10 years.


The port authority said that every passengers spends an average of just under €100 in the capital during their stay.