Abstract

This paper studies the great recover of the tourism in Portugal in the year 2023. One of the sectors which must suffer with Covid-19 is one which shows better resilience and recovery. We show the importance of tourism in the economy of some European countries and present key tourism indicators in Portugal.

Keywords

Social Impact, Covid-19, Tourism Recover, Portugal

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1. Introduction

Probably the most significant global social event after WWII is the Covid-19 Pandemic. During approximately two years the world “shut down” ( Han et al., 2022 ), countries closed frontiers, not only the international travelling but in some countries national mobility was also restricted. Several segments of society around world were hit in many aspects, education, commerce, transport, leisure, among others. This phenomenon has a huge economic impact in all countries ( Kliger, 2021 ; Lopez et al., 2022 ), and also changes the routine and way of living in majority of society activities: Education ( Chairunnisak et al., 2022 ; Campbell et al., 2021 ; Zhu et al., 2022 ; Koh & Daniel, 2022 ), Work ( Massar et al., 2022 ), Urban Behaviour ( Long & Liu, 2021 ; Fujii et al., 2021 ; Saw et al., 2021 ), Medical Education ( McKinley & Ghaffarifar, 2021 ), Psychology ( Kollamparambil & Oyenubi, 2021 ), Healthcare ( Gadi et al., 2022 ), among others. But probably the activity which certainly suffered most from this impact was the Tourism, “no travel, no tourists”. All components of tourism have to adapt to a new normal to permit its return ( Marques et al., 2020 ). This resilience was double-sided, both the tourist and the tourism industry had to change ( Han et al., 2022 ; Pforr & Hosie, 2008 ). The return is in force in this year of 2023, mainly in summer. The Ukraine war, the extreme hot temperatures and the rains do not avoid the great number of tourists and hotel occupations to hit numbers near a some even above those pre Covid 19 over all the world, in particular in Europe where this summer is considered one of the busiest. In this work we study the data of tourism in Portugal, comparing the situation before, during and after the Covid-19.

The World Tourism Organization (UNTWO) classifies its Tourism Statistics Database ( World Tourism Organization, n.d.b ) in the following key tourism indicators: 1-Inbound Tourism, 2-Domestic Tourism, 3-Outbound Tourism, 4-Tourism Industries, 5-Employment and 6-Macroeconomic Indicators. This follows the International Recommendations for Tourism Statistics (IRTS 2008) ( United Nations, 2008 ). In this work we focus mainly on 1, 5 and 6.

2. The Importance of Tourism in Economy and Business

Tourism has a great impact in economies of several countries, and it responds for a significant part of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in some of them. In EUROPE, countries like Croatia, Portugal, Spain and Italy, tourism contributes with more than 10% to the GDP and the number of jobs in the direct and indirect tourism related industries and activities surpasses 5% of global number. Italy, for example, more than 4.5% of the total of jobs are related to tourism. In Table 1 and Figure 1 we see the numbers of tourism in economy in some countries of European Community [EC27] in 2019 ( World Tourism Organization, n.d.a ).

In Europe tourism has a huge importance in over employment. Although many of the jobs are temporary due the season dependence, this creation of jobs has a very positive impact in economy. Table 2 and Figure 2 show the index in % of the direct tourist employment related to the total national employment and in Table 3 and Figure 3 we have the index of the indirect tourism employment also related to the total ( Marques et al., 2020 ).

3. The World Tourism Barometer

UNWTO publishes periodically since 2003 the journal UNWTO World Tourism Barometer ( World Tourism Organization, n.d.c ), there are no fixed months nor fixed number of annual issues, but in general are 6 issues per year and the

months following the relevant tourism numbers news, the main tourism growth measure is the International Tourists Arrives (ITA) or overnight stays. The growth is measured by the percent change at annual rate, that is a comparison with the previous year. The WTO annual publication, International Tourism Highlights ( World Tourism Organization, 2021 , 2023 ) also has a complete account and comparisons of the relevant world tourism data.

Two years before the Covid-19, the world was in an ascending economic situation and tourism reflected this. The year of 2017 was the strongest year since 2010 with a worldwide ITA of 1.32 billion representing an annual increase of 7%. This situation continues in 2018 with 1.4 billion ITA an annual increase of 6%, a number above the forecast of 4% to 5% in the beginning of the year, 2019 was also a good year for tourism, the increase of 4% matched the forecast. The great change come in 2020, in January the forecast appointed to a growth also of 4%, but in the first months with the spread of Covid-19, the world shuts down an at the end of the year the fall was 74%, this decline represents fewer 900 million international arrives compared with 2019. The tourism analysts agreed that the recovery could last some years. The year 2021 was still very weak with a global increase of 8%, in Europe this number was bit better with 19%. The year 2022 was a good year with a growth of 225% much ahead of a forecast of 30% to 78%, but the numbers were still far from those of 2019, −37%. The 2023 is being very good for tourism, in the first nine months the numbers points to 935 million international arrives an increase of 38% over the same months of 2022, in Europe this numbers are better reaching 94% of the pre Covid-19 situation. In some EU countries like in Portugal, ITA are still better, including above of the pre pandemic levels. In Table 4 and Figure 4 we have an account of those numbers.

4. The Tourism in Portugal

After the entrance in EU in 1985 Portugal lost much of its traditional industries capability due the concurrency of new emergent market of Asian countries. Sectors like textile does not could compete with those countries. On the other hand, due to the EU investment in transport, infrastructures, like roads and airports together with hotels, inns and guesthouses, the tourism became a major economy actor, which now is responsible for more than 5% of the GDP.

In Table 5 and Figure 5 we have the ratio in % tourism direct GDP as a proportion of total GDP, we observe the growth since 2010 to 2019, Portugal follows the international trend. In 2020 and 2021 years of recession this proportion drops showing that tourism was one of economic areas which suffered more with Covid-19.

Next, we make a comparison of tourism’s key indicators, before, during and after Covid-19. The data gathering here is available in the database of Tourism of Portugal ( Turismo de Portugal, 2023 ). We use the classification: 1) Guests, is the total number of tourists arrivals, national and international (or ITA); 2) Value added, to represent the money earned by all the accommodations establishments, 3) Overnight stays, to count the night’s stay for single tourist.

We observe in Table 6 and Figure 6 that in 2023, both national and mainly international (ITA) have a historic maximum (reached before in 2019). This result is common to Mediterranean countries this year. The available data is until to October, we indicate this with an “*”, for the total we estimate a scenario base in the ratio between the values of the first ten months and the total year observed in recent years, we use this same approach in the other statistics present here.

We have in Table 7 and Figure 7 the Value added by the accommodations establishments also shows a great increase in 2023, of course in the great change of this total revenue, the rise of all prices must be considered, but these accounts are beyond the scope of this article.

Table 8 and Figure 8 show the Overnights stays, this is also meaningful to compare the year of 2023 with previous years. We observe that the ratio of the total between 2023 and 2022 is 1.14, a value that matches the same for those of Table 7 describing the tourist Guests, fact that confirms the amazing tourism numbers of the present year of 2023.

5. Conclusion

In this work we make a comparison of the world tourism situation in the last years which had been marked by a great epidemic. In the year 2020 tourism tried a dramatic change, with the Covid-19 pandemic spreading all around the world ( Sharfuddin, 2020 ). Safety rigid protocols had been adopted by national and international public transport, the situation was the same in commercial stores,

schools, hospitals, and any public place restricted people circulation, some of them stopped their activities. The situation in the year 2021 did not change. A slow comeback starts in 2022, with a new normal the world has changed forever ( Phillips, 2022 ). Tourism was one of the activities which suffered most, it had to adapt in all aspects to permit, give safety, confidence to all its participants, and this worked. The amazing resilience of the tourists and the tourist’s industries led to a recovery, and in Portugal this recovery was more than remarkable.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.

References