Tourism in Portugal maintains its growth trajectory in the number of guests and overnight stays even after the summer months. In October, the Canadian market stood out with the biggest annual increase (+15%) among the ten main tourist-sending markets, and, simultaneously, resident overnight stays reversed the downward trend recorded in September, rising 1.2%, to a total of 1.9 million.

The quick estimate of tourist activity for October, published by the National Statistics Institute (INE), indicates that the accommodation sector registered 3 million guests and 7.6 million overnight stays that month, an increase of 3.8% and 2.5%, respectively, compared to a year ago.

Comparing data from October with September, there is a reversal of the trend in overnight stays for residents — from a decrease of 0.6% to an increase of 1.2% —, while in the case of non-residents, there was a slowdown of 0.7 percentage points in tourist overnight stays, to a total of 5.7 million.

In October, only the Alentejo lagged behind in the growth of overnight stays, with a decrease of 4.4% compared to the same month last year. The biggest increases occurred in the autonomous region of the Azores (+10.8%) and in the Center (+7.0%).

Regarding the external market, overnight stays grew in all regions — most significantly in the Azores (+19.3%) and in the Setúbal Peninsula (+8.9%) —, with the exception, again, of Alentejo ( -3.1%). In terms of the domestic market, Madeira (+10.7%) and Centro (+8.6%) recorded the biggest increases in the number of overnight stays, while the biggest decreases were Alentejo (-5.3%), the West and Tagus Valley (-4.8%) and the Algarve (-3.9%).

Where are tourists coming from?

Among the 10 main source markets in the eighth month of the year, which represented around three quarters (75.7%) of total non-resident overnight stays, the United Kingdom remains with the highest weight, at 19.9%, followed by Germany and the United States (with shares of 12.6% and 10.4%, respectively).

Of this group of ten countries, while Canada stands out with the biggest growth (+15.0%), Spain had the biggest decrease in tourists (-12.4%).

In all tourist accommodation establishments, the average stay was 2.54 nights, which is equivalent to a drop of 1.2% compared to October 2023 (-2.1% for residents and -1.0% for non-residents). The only growth in this indicator was observed in the Azores and Madeira — 1.9% and 2.2% respectively.

As for the net bed occupancy rate, there was a drop of 0.2 percentage points, to 51.0%, in the month under analysis, maintaining the downward trend already seen in September (-0.1 percentage point). In the net room occupancy rate (63.2%), there was an increase of 0.7 percentage points.