The numbers report that Brazilians made up the largest percentage of Portugal’s international arrivals on 17.9 percent, followed by Americans, Russians, Chinese and Japanese, all with percentages in the region of 1.5 percent.
As regards Portuguese citizens heading beyond the confines of the European Union, Switzerland proved the most popular destination and accounted for 23.5 percent followed by Brazil on 12.3 percent.
Tourism at international, non-EU destinations amounted to 7.3 percent of the nights spent by Portuguese citizens internationally.
In the European Union overall, tourism is above all an internal affair, Eurostat said.
Nearly 90 percent of tourism nights in the EU are spent by EU residents, meaning that tourists from outside the EU account for only around 10 percent of the total.
And when travelling, EU residents spent almost 85 percent of their tourism nights within the EU, with only just over 15 percent in extra-EU destinations.
Nevertheless, more than 300 million nights were spent in the EU by non-EU visitors in tourist accommodation in 2014.
With 17.8 percent and 14.9 percent respectively of all nights spent by non-EU tourists in the EU in 2014, tourists from the United States and Russia were the main visitors from outside the EU, while those from China, Japan and Brazil each represented less than 5 percent of nights spent by non-EU tourists.
Over the past decade, the EU has grown as a tourist destination. Compared with 2005, extra-EU tourism in the EU increased by 75 percent in 2014, particularly driven by a boom in the number of nights spent by tourists from China, Russia and Brazil, while the growth has been more moderate for tourists from the United States and a decrease was registered for those from Japan.
In the opposite direction, the United States, Turkey and Switzerland were the top 3 extra-EU tourism destinations of EU residents in 2014.
At Member State level, tourism patterns, both for incoming and outgoing tourists, are clearly shaped by geographical, historical, cultural and linguistic factors, researchers said.