The percentage for last year was 83%, so there’s a clear upward trend there, many families choosing to rent holiday homes from private owners which reflect better value than traveling to a foreign country because overall cost was seen as the main factor in the holiday destination decision making.

As one might expect, the most popular destination for Portuguese tourists was the Algarve region, which hosted a solid 69% of the country’s internal holidaymakers.

The Beira Litoral and Minho regions saw large growths in demand of 72% and 45% respectively.

The overall tourist figures were boosted by the availability of cheap flights towards well-known destinations in the Algarve such as Faro, Lisbon and Oporto. The numbers were also helped by the the fact that the prices in the Algarve where less than if the equivalent purchases would’ve been made in northern Europe for instance. This might’ve also been a consideration behind the growth of Spanish and French visitors.

Portugal proved to be the fourth most popular country in Europe as far as people searching for places to rent, this representing 11% of the total number.

Another interesting data point that the study revealed was that the Portuguese holidaymakers are big believers in the idea of last minute booking, with 52% of Portuguese tourists who booked in July and August traveling in those same months.

As we mentioned earlier, renting private homes for vacations is becoming increasingly popular, the current economic climate making it a much more cost-effective way of ensuring accommodation during a holiday stay.

These numbers coordinate with those coming from various Algarve sources which has seen an increase in foreign visitors as well.

The occupancy rates in the region’s tourist accommodation establishments reached a solid 92.1% last month, representing a 2.4% increase when you compare the number to August of 2012.

This increase in occupancy rates is attributed mostly to a rather significant rise in French, German and British markets – these three registering a healthy 37.9%, 21.8% and a rather modest, but still good, 10.4% increases, respectively – thus making the month of August the most successful since 2008, and that can only be great news.

The growth of those markets made up for the 4.9% drop in Portuguese tourists.

According to the president of AHETA – Eliderico Viegas – thought he French market especially grew considerably, this only represented 4.9% of the total, which is still dominated by British tourists, while at the same time, admitting that this higher occupancy rate does not necessarily mean an increase in profit, because the tourist establishments had to lower their prices in order to attract the business to begin with.

He did also add however, that if the occupancy rates continue their upward trend for the following four to five years, the region might reach the same level of success that it registered in the past.

During the last month of the calendar summer, the areas of Carvoeiro/Armacao de Pera saw a 3.9% increase, Monte Gordo/Vila Real de Santo Antonio 3.4% and Albufeira a 2.3% registered the biggest boosts in their occupancy rates.

Albufeira was the municipality that registered the highest occupancy rate, hitting a 95.8%, while Tavira was the lowers with an 86%.

We don’t have other numbers to go by, but we’ll keep an eye on what happens to the tourism numbers in the future and see how the region deals with the recent calls to not close down for the winter.

The momentum that he is referring to has to do with the fact that at least till the present time, the tourism numbers in the Algarve have been showing a positive and upward trend, and that he considers that this is reason enough for the Algarve to establish itself as an all year-round destination.

He appealed to businesses operating within the Algarve tourism industry to stay open for as long as possible because in his words, it is ‘essential’ to try and ‘keep facilities and infrastructures connected to tourism open’ during this coming winter; because that’s what is needed to start the process of reaching the goal of making the Algarve into a winter destination.

Silva continued to say that the Algarve tourism industry as a whole is working on the 2012/14 winter campaign and he said that the campaign has shown very positive results in securing about 100,000 nights to be spent in the region on top of all of those already contracted for this winter.

He stressed that the region has to affirm itself as a year-round destination and in order for this to happen, each and every public and private entity have to help create the conditions so as to reach this objective.

Mister Silva is quite uniquely experienced in the subject, having been mayor of Albufeira – one of the region’s major tourist hotspots – for a decade, and now being re-elected as the president of the RTA; he is quite aware of the seasonality aspect of the region and that’s why he is trying to change that.

We can only hope that he manages to do this for the overall good for everyone.