Brits are returning to the Algarve
We’ve been reporting on and off about the rather successful season the Algarve had this year, with the ‘Algarve Tourism Scenario’ overview being the latest to tell us that the second quarter of 2013 showed ‘positive variations’ in all of the tourist-related indicators that it analyzed.
The Algarve Tourism Board’s bulleting was designed as a tool for professional working in the tourist sector, and it has revealed that between April and June 2013, the main indicators were behaving positively, being driven by a demand from foreign visitors that went against the slight drop in numbers from national visitors.
During the second quarter of 2013, the total number of guests in the Algarve numbered close to 936,000, symbolizing an increase of 3.6 percent in comparison to the same period of 2012.
This growth was spurred on by an increase in the number of foreign visitors which was up by 5.56 percent from last year’s figures, whilst the number of national visitors continued to fall, this time by 1.34 percent when compared to 2012.
When separating the numbers by nationalities, the Brits made up by far the largest slice of foreign tourists coming to the Algarve during the second quarter of 2013. This number built on the figures from April-June 2012 and actually outweighed the numbers of Portuguese nationals vacationing in the Algarve during that same period. On the other hand, during the first quarter of 2013, that scenario was reversed.
As far as other foreign guests go, Germany supplied 8.1 percent of tourists while the Spanish market shrunk even further, however Irish visitors grew in number, just like the Dutch.
The Faro tourist office was by far the busiest of the regional bureaus, helping the largest number of visitors, so at least from the tourism point of view, things went well during the high season in the Algarve, we’ll just have to see how they fare during the winter season.
