Foreign Overnight Stays Slip in June, the First Dip in Eight Months for Portugal's Hotels
Overnight stays by foreign visitors fell 0.6% year on year in June, the first decline since October, though domestic travel and rising room rates kept revenue growing.
Portugal's tourism boom showed its first crack in months in June, as overnight stays by international visitors dipped 0.6% compared with a year earlier — the first year-on-year fall since October, when a run of growth began. The provisional figures come from the Instituto Nacional de Estatística (INE, Statistics Portugal), which publishes the sector's closely watched monthly tally.
Hotels, guesthouses and other tourist accommodation recorded 3.1 million guests and 8.1 million overnight stays during the month. Of those overnight stays, 5.7 million came from foreign visitors and 2.5 million from residents travelling within their own country. Domestic demand did much of the heavy lifting, rising 3.8% and offsetting the softness abroad to keep the overall total in positive territory.
Revenue still rising
A dip in foreign volume did not translate into a squeeze on the till. Total revenue climbed 4.7% to €786.6 million, while revenue from rooms alone rose 4.5% to €609.3 million. The sector kept pricing power: the average daily rate for a room reached €140.8, up 2.7%, and revenue per available room (RevPAR) edged up 1% to €90.5.
In other words, hoteliers are earning more from each guest even as the flow of overseas visitors levels off — a pattern that has defined the post-pandemic years, when higher prices rather than higher volumes have driven much of the industry's growth.
A widening regional gap
The national average masked sharp regional contrasts. The North led the country with a 4.8% rise in overnight stays, followed by Greater Lisbon at 2.8%. At the other end, the West and Tagus Valley (Oeste e Vale do Tejo) region suffered the steepest fall, down 6.6%.
The June wobble lands amid a broader debate about whether Portugal's most-visited cities have reached the limits of what they can absorb. Lisbon and Porto have spent the past year tightening rules on short-term rentals and weighing new tourist taxes, and members of the European Parliament's housing committee have described the country's accommodation crunch as "severe." A gentle cooling in foreign demand, if it persists, could ease some of that pressure — though a single month is far from a trend.
For now, the industry remains a pillar of the economy, directly employing an estimated 400,000 to 450,000 people and supporting more than a million jobs indirectly. Whether June marks a genuine turning point or a one-off blip will depend on the July and August figures, which capture the true peak of the summer season and will not be published until the autumn.
