United States could overtake UK as Portugal’s top supplier of tourists

The United States could soon become the number one source of tourists for Portugal if current trends continue. The first half of 2024 saw a 15% increase in American visitors to Portugal, compared to the same period in 2023. This means 1.08 million US tourists went to Portugal over the first six months of the year. And if we look across the last two years, the increase in US visitors is so marked that it has almost doubled, rocketing from 584,700 in the first half of 2022 to over a million tourists.

US visitors only just behind UK and growing faster

In fact, the US figures are only just behind the quantity of tourists from the UK, Portugal’s traditional number-one source market. The UK supplied 1.2 million in the same time period. That represents a relative slowdown in British visitors, whose numbers were only 6% up since the previous year. The changes are causing commentators to assume that if the relative growth figures continue, the US will soon be supplying more visitors to Portugal than the UK does.

What’s more, Uncle Sam already sends more visitors to the Portuguese capital Lisbon than any other nation. And Portuguese residency and investment firm Belion had noted earlier this year that US visitors had “increased their spending in Portugal by 18.2% compared to the same period last year and is now the fourth largest market in Portugal’s tourism sector, surpassing the Spanish. US tourists contributed €692.2 million to the Portuguese economy, while Spanish contributed €678.4 million.”