The number of overnight stays grew again, with hotels having accommodated more foreign and national tourists, according to figures released this week by the National Statistics Institute.
The overall number of tourists that stayed in Portugal’s hotels last year grew by 8.9 percent on the year before, to 20.6 million, close enough to the 21 million benchmark that has this week been announced as a new record.
Overnight stays rose to a total of 57.5 million, boosted by foreign visitors, who made up 72.4 percent of nights spent in Portugal’s hotel rooms.
“External overnight stays showed an increase of 8.6 percent in 2017 (up 11.5 percent on 2016) and totalled 41.6 million overnight stays”, the INE said in this week’s bulletin.
Total income from hotels amounted to 3.39 billion euros, benefiting from an improvement in the results of all regions of the country, with best results being obtained in July and August (€428 million and €502 million euros).
The average stay, which had been increasing for two consecutive years, however declined in the last year. In 2016, tourists stayed, on average, 2.82 nights in the country, and currently spend 2.79 nights, or slightly above in the Central and Algarve regions.