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With Covid restrictions lifted, Portugal is eager to welcome back Chinese tourists

The head of marketing for Turismo de Portugal says it plans to surpass the pre-pandemic level of 400,000 Chinese tourists welcomed in 2019.

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The head of marketing for Turismo de Portugal says it plans to surpass the pre-pandemic level of 400,000 Chinese tourists welcomed in 2019.

ARTICLE BY

PUBLISHED

UPDATED: 22 Dec 2023, 12:27 am

Portugal’s tourism board, Turismo de Portugal (TP), is hoping to revive interest from Chinese holidaymakers now that the world’s most populous country has emerged from three years of draconian Covid-19 restrictions.

Before the pandemic, in 2019, Portugal welcomed almost 400,000 Chinese visitors, who collectively spent 224 millions euros – 20 percent more than their compatriots did in 2018, according to China-Lusophone Brief.

Lídia Monteiro, the board’s director of marketing, said that TP was now ramping up promotional activity “in a more persistent way so that we can quickly reach the numbers we had in 2019 and even surpass them”.

[See more: Lisbon gets set for a week-long event highlighting Macao as a travel destination]

She was speaking at a recent ceremony to welcome a travel industry delegation from China’s Zhejiang province. 

The eastern coastal province of some 57 million people was the source of more than a third of the Chinese tourists who visited Portugal in 2019 – and it is the home province of many Chinese living in Portugal, something that “helps and contributes a lot to mutual understanding and also to boosting business” Monteiro said.

A direct, weekly nonstop flight operates between the provincial capital Hangzhou and Lisbon. Beijing Capital Airlines says it plans to increase the frequency to twice a week to meet anticipated demand.

 

UPDATED: 22 Dec 2023, 12:27 am

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