The Evolution in Number of Guests and Overnight Stays: Is the Tourism Sector Sufficiently Prepared for New Paradigms?

The Covid-19 pandemic has created new realities and contexts that provide real challenges for the population, economic operators and public institutions. The tourism sector in Portugal is particularly vulnerable to these new scenarios and considering the sheer weight of these activities on the Portuguese economy, the framework which has been generated is a real problem for the several stakeholders. From different dimensions of the tourism sector in Portugal, in this study indicators associated with guests and overnight stays were selected. The evolution of these indicators was first analysed and later correlated with other economic variables. The main objective was to assess the evolution of the sector over recent years and the impacts from Covid-19 on these frameworks. The results and the main insights obtained show that nobody was prepared for this economic blow and that the evolution of the tourism sector in Portugal since March 2020 has suffered a strong negative trend, more than in other sectors, due to the vulnerability of the sector to human mobility, namely from international markets.