Tourist travel abroad by residents of Portugal increased by 592.8% in the second quarter, compared to the same period in 2021, and travel within the national territory grew by 34.9%.

According to statistics on tourist demand from residents, published by the National Statistics Institute (INE), between April and June, trips made by residents grew by 52.2% and reached a total of 5.5 million, which represents a fall of 1.7% compared to the same period in 2019.

INE data reveals that trips within the national territory corresponded to 85.9% of trips (4.7 million), while trips abroad totalled 774.2 thousand.

In the period under analysis, the main reason for travel was “leisure, recreation or holidays”, which was associated with 47.6% of the total and corresponded to 2.6 million trips, having grown 49.9% year-on-year, followed by “visiting family or friends” (38.0%) and professionals or business (9.0%).

Free accommodation

Hotels and similar concentrated 31.7% of overnight stays resulting from tourist trips in the second quarter, gaining weight in the total (+15.2 percentage points), while free private accommodation remained the main option for travellers (62.1 % of overnight stays, -14.8 percentage points).

According to INE, there were 6.0 million overnight stays in “hotels and similar” in the period under analysis, while “free private accommodation” corresponded to 11.7 million overnight stays.

Around 24.4% of residents made at least one tourist trip between April and June, an increase of 8.2 percentage points compared to the same period last year.