New Year: hotels “practically full”
Bensaude Group positive
diariodosacores reports that the end of the year is expected to be particularly strong in the hotels of Madeira and the Azores, according to estimates by the Associação da Hotelaria de Portugal (AHP).
In Madeira, the Porto Bay hotels are already 90% occupied, mainly with English, German or Scandinavian guests. In the Azores, the Bensaude Group handles reservations for Christmas and ‘New Year’s Eve’ equal to or greater than 2019 in several hotels, mainly with nationals, but also tourists from the United States of America, Canada, France and Italy. “Since this is the low season, the relative weight of the revenues obtained, mainly at the end of the year, and on average will be around 15% of the revenue obtained in the months of December and January”, according to the Bensaude Commercial Director, Pedro Salazar.
According to the newspaper Expresso, although prices are, in general, 15% to 20% higher, according to the President of AHP, the demand for hotels on these festive dates is felt throughout the country, including Madeira and the Azores. “For Christmas dinners, we are having a good response from the market, at the level of 2019, there is a post-pandemic liberation effect, and people realize that everything is much more expensive”.
AHP says the highlight goes to “Madeira, which is doing quite well, cities like Lisbon and Porto also have encouraging signs, and we see the Algarve almost interrupting the usual low cycle of seasonality in the second half of December”. The only issue for hoteliers is that both Christmas and New Year’s Eve fall this year on weekends, “not allowing longer stays”.
