Taking March alone, the tourism report details an 18.8% surge in guest numbers to reach 1.4 million bettered by the 20.3% advance in nights spent that thus topped 3.7 million.

“This evolution outpaced the previous month (+14.9% and +15.5%) and is in part associated with a calendar effect given that Easter this year fell in March and in April in 2015,” said the institute’s report.

March also saw growth in both the national market, up 18.5%, and in international visitors, up 21.0%, whilst the average stay lasted 2.7 nights, a rise of 1.2% with the hotel occupancy rate improving 5.9% to close the month on 41.1% and against a quarterly rate of 33.5%, up 3.6% year-on-year.

The month saw the RevPAR average earnings per room indicator advance 22.1% to stand at €29.6 with Lisbon and Madeira charging the highest average rates on €47.7 and €44.3 respectively.

Nights spent in hotels grew by 21.9% to account for 69.0% of the total with 4-star establishments seeing a 24.2% rise in nights spent to consolidate their now 48.7% market share.

International arrivals from the 12 main markets expanded their share of the market with non-nationals accounting for 81.4% of guests in March this year against 80.9% in 2015 with the Spanish Easter influx again arriving with March seeing an annualised rise of 77% in Spanish arrivals boosting their market share to 14.4% against 9.8% one year ago.

However, this remained behind the United Kingdom, up 19.7% to stand at 20.2% of nights spent by non-residents ahead of Germany that turned in growth of 13% but seeing its share slip from 18.8% in March 2015 to 17.6% this year.

The Azores continued its strong performance in terms of tourist arrivals, up 55.6% year-on-year, with the Algarve, the North and the Alentejo all seeing sharp increases in numbers, up 28.2%, 25.3% and 21.8% respectively even while the Algarve and Lisbon together receive over half of all tourists visiting Portugal with market shares of 28.4% and 27.5% of all nights spent.