Portugal and Britain were reported to be in talks secure an air corridor which would see travellers exempted from quarantines on returning home.
The Portuguese foreign ministry confirmed that it had asked for extra detail on the UK’s decision to bring in a 14-day quarantine for travellers into the UK, including residents, from 8 June.
It added: “Given the relevant reciprocal interests, the foreign ministry is confident that it will be possible to agree a solution that meets these interests, especially concerning the coming summer season.”
UK visitors accounted for 20% of the 16 million foreign tourists that visited Portugal last year. Tourism accounts for 15% of the country’s GDP.
In April Luís Araújo, president, Turismo de Portugal, told us that the country was working towards “building trust” as it hoped for growth in tourism.
Key to this was a “stamp of approval” to distinguish tourist activities which were compliant with hygiene and cleaning requirements.
Talking through the country’s progress to reopening, Araújo told us: “Each week seems like a month. Three or four weeks ago we were worried about the tourism companies, but they put their activity on hold and stayed on track to reopen. Our concern was giving them everything they needed; giving them money very quickly, helping them payoff workers but be able to take them back, helping them negotiate over fixed costs such as insurance.
“Now we see that companies are focused on recovery. We have some issues with airlines, but we are working on that. The hotels here were never closed, only the restaurants, but most of them closed because they had no clients.
“We have been doing lots of online training. We have 12 hotel schools in Portugal and we have 100 teachers preparing courses on everything you might need - mostly digital marketing. We have 25 delegations abroad who are training on markets. We are keeping busy and keeping people informed.
“Now we are starting on building trust.”
The “stamp of approval”, distinguishing tourist activities which were compliant with hygiene and cleaning requirements for the prevention and control of Covid-19 and other possible infections, was intended to reinforce the tourist's confidence in the safety of the destination.
Prior to the pandemic, there had been increased interest on hotel investment in Portugal, with the appetite for urban hotels expected to grow this year and institutional investors gathering around.
Pre-Covid-19, Christie & Co said: “A majority said the market is more attractive today than it was five years ago. In response only 10% said they are looking to invest internationally, with over 80% looking to invest in their current portfolio or nationally. If we consider the wider transactional landscape in 2019, at least 70% has been through local investors.”
European markets had generally not seen any impact caused by Brexit to date – only one third of respondents in Spain, Portugal and France said they have been impacted, and only 20% in Germany agreed with this sentiment. However, of those who had not seen any impact to date, c. 50% expected to see this in 2020, driven by tourism rich Spain & Portugal. Spain welcomed 18.5 million British tourists in 2018 (22% of global visitors), and despite respondents not seeing an impact from Brexit in 2019, they were less optimistic about the impact in 2020.
Insight: Portugal was able to control the spread of the pandemic, as in Greece and is now eyeing its economy and is eager to get hotels open and full. Air bridges/tunnels/bubbles are coming to fore as summer looms, popping up all over the place.
The issues here are, well, two. Travel bubbles feel like a sensible solution when both countries are at a similar level in the pandemic. Here, that is not the case and Portugal is risking an influx of the virus.
The second issue is the UK’s quarantine plan. Being friendly with Portugal means that visitors returning to the UK can go straight out to have some socially-distanced Nandos when they return, instead of waiting 14 days inside. The same was planned with France, until ructions saw it being imposed. Such political fnagling does no-one any favours, but with Brexit deadlines looming, travellers could find themselves the pawns in science-free politics.