Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal, Jan. 9, 2025 (Lusa) - Portugal's secretary of state for tourism, Pedro Machado, said on Thursday that the construction of the planned new Lisbon airport "is fundamental" for improving the country's connectivity with emerging countries such as Mexico and Argentina.
"We're working towards expanding to markets that still don't have connectivity with Portugal, such as Mexico and Argentina," said the secretary of state, Pedro Machado, during the conference 'Tourism in Portugal: Strategies to Lead in 2025' in Lisbon.
Arguing that the work being carried out by the government already aims to strengthen connectivity, he stressed the importance of the new Lisbon airport in realising the ambition and extending the perimeter to emerging countries, but also to "second-tier" markets such as Saudi Arabia.
This was one of the challenges pointed out by the secretary of state, in addition to the need for Portugal to train more human resources for the sector - problems that he acknowledged "no longer new."
Machado highlighted a project launched about a fortnight ago together with the Portuguese Tourism Confederation (CTP) to train 1,000 immigrants over a three-month period, which it is hoped will make it possible to "mitigate what is critical for Portugal, which is the quality of the service provided."
At the conference, which was organised by the Institute for Tourism Planning and Development (IPDT), the state and prospects of the sector in Portugal were debated. For his part, Machado also highlighted the development of the sector in Portugal, saying he believes that 2025 will be the year of consolidation of "sustainable growth" and "tourism quality".
The president of the Portuguese Tourism Confederation (CTP), Francisco Calheiros, predicted a "challenging and uncertain" year but also said that he believed that Portugal would "continue to have good indicators" in 2025.
However, he pointed to the need to implement strategies that allow new tourist centres to emerge and that "demystify the idea that there is too much tourism" in the country.
"There's no such thing as too much tourism; there's too little economy," he said, adding that in 2025, the CTP will continue to insist on the “urgency of the new Lisbon airport” and high-speed rail links - which Portugal does not yet have - but also on the need to respond to manpower shortages and to take advantage of European Union funding via the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP).
After presenting the results of the 72nd IPDT Tourism Barometer, which estimate that this year the sector will grow to 33 million guests and 6.5 billion in revenue, the president of the national tourist board, Turismo de Portugal, Carlos Abade, argued that tourism "is not an end in itself" and argued for the need for the sector to have the capacity to generate wealth.
"The success of the sector will not be measured by the number of tourists or overnight stays, but by adding value," he said.
Nuno Costa, the commercial director for aviation of ANA Aeroportos de Portugal, which manages the country's airports, emphasised the need to "break seasonality and 'overtourism'" and warned that, by 2030, the younger generations would represent "the largest percentage of tourists" visiting the country "It's very important that we realise that our future customers will be different from our current customers," he said.
SPC/ARO // ARO.
Lusa
