According the National Statistics Institute (INE,) stats show that tourist demand by residents in the first three months of the year continued to be severely affected by the pandemic “with 1.6 million trips being made, which corresponds to a variation of -57.6% (-57.4% in the fourth quarter of 2020)”.

"This reduction was very significant with regard to trips within the national territory which, although concentrating 97% of trips, decreased by 53.3%, but was even more intense in trips to foreign destinations, which decreased by 89.5%", he concluded the INE.

Tourist trips to foreign destinations represented 3% of the total (2.6% in the fourth quarter of 2020), corresponding to 46.8 thousand trips (-89.5% compared to the same period of the previous year; -90.3% in the previous quarter ), with decreases of 85.6%, 94.5% and 81.8%, respectively, in January, February and March.

In the period under review, the main reason for traveling was “visiting family or friends” (750,700 trips, -48.8%), with its representativeness increasing (47.3% of the total, compared to 39.3% in the same quarter of the previous year).

The reason “leisure, recreation or vacation” corresponded to only 415.8 thousand trips (26.2% of the total, -14.6 percentage points), having decreased by 72.7%.

Travel for professional or business reasons (227.3 thousand) increased their relative weight by 1.7 percentage points in the first three months of the year (14.3% of the total).

Hotels and similar sectors concentrated 5.5% of overnight stays resulting from tourist travel in the quarter of the year, losing weight in the total (-15.7 percentage points), while free private accommodation continued to be the main option for travellers (88, 7% of overnight stays, +14.8 percentage points).