Portugal’s Secretary of State for Tourism, Rita Marques, has told a national newspaper that tourism in Portugal has been set back by 10 years because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
An interview with Expresso revealed that Portugal’s tourism industry lost a massive €7.7 billion in revenues and in terms of capital income, the country has lost 10 years.
However, Rita Marques believes that Portugal will recover by 2023 and the quality of its offer will increase.
The minister said that Portugal’s tourism industry saw a 56% tumble in revenues and expressed the hope that by 2022 or 2023, it would recover to the kind of revenues seen in 2019, but that it would be necessary to reposition Portugal as a tourism destination.
Rita Marques said that measures already announced to support the industry, which include an extra €750-900 million package and other measures aimed to protect jobs and outlined on the site Apoiar.pt.
“At the moment, the Ministry of the Economy is also working on a raft of measures to inject capital into companies which have been seriously undercapitalised because of the pandemic,” she said.
She added that the vaccine offered a lifeline and expressed the hope that by Easter, Portugal would begin to see an increased flow of tourists as people gained more confidence to travel because of it.
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