Portugal grew above average, with overnight stays increasing nearly 4% last year compared to 2023, Eurostat data shows.

About two-thirds (62.8%) of overnight stays were in hotels and similar accommodations, 23.7% in holiday rentals and other short-term accommodations, such as rental apartments, and 13.5% in campsites, motorhome parks, and trailer parks, adds the European statistics office.

Portugal recorded 88 million overnight stays, representing a 3.75% increase compared to the 84.9 million overnight stays in 2023, surpassing the European average. Cyprus and Malta recorded the highest annual growth, with increases of 14.5% and 14.4%, respectively.

Conversely, only two countries saw demand decline compared to 2023. Finland saw a 0.7% decrease in overnight stays, while France saw a 0.6% slowdown. Belgium and Sweden maintained virtually stable numbers, with a slight increase of 0.3%.

Residents account for more than half of the overnight stays

More than half (51.9%, or 1.57 billion overnight stays) of the 3.02 billion overnight stays in the EU were made by national guests of their respective countries, while the remaining 48.1% (1.45 billion) were international guests.

According to Eurostat, most international overnight stays were made by tourists from other EU countries (61.6%) and other European countries (21.3%), while only 16.4% of international overnight stays were made by people from other regions of the world.

Among tourists from outside the European continent, guests from North America accounted for 7.5% of all international overnight stays, followed by Asia with 4.9%, Central and South America with 2.3%, Oceania with 1.0%, and Africa with 0.8%.