Porto & North with "interesting bookings" for May and June

Luis Pedro Martins, President of Porto & North of Portugal Tourism (Turismo do Porto e Norte de Portugal-TPNP), revealed on Monday, April 19th, that the Northern region is already beginning to see some recovery, especially in the hotel sector, which has some “interesting bookings” for the month of May, and an occupancy rate already exceeding 50% for the month of June.

“There are already bookings. Bookings are beginning to pick up, for May, in particular, there are already many bookings. Upon speaking with operators and speaking with hotels, we have the month of May with interesting bookings. Some [hotels] are already around 30% to 40%, and regarding the month of June is already over 50%”, said Luis Pedro Martins to News Agency Lusa, at an event in Matosinhos that celebrated the reopening of restaurants in the region.

Luis Pedro Martins also said that Porto & North of Portugal Tourism is joining efforts to avoid what happened in the summer of last year, in which the vast majority of bookings were in units located outside the cities.

“What we want to do is to counteract what happened last year, when the big cities had a very big loss and we want to promote more the big cities, by presenting arguments to tourists that our big cities are still a long way from what is happening in other cities like Barcelona, ​​Paris and London or alike, with which they are being compared to”, he explained.

Luis Pedro Martins also said that the regional entity is already preparing campaigns to promote the region in the domestic market, but that they are also preparing to promote it in the international proximity markets. “We will again be campaigning for domestic tourists in the first place. Then we will turn to our first source market which is Spain and, the other proximity markets, such as France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands”.

Despite regretting the absence of international tourists at this time, the president of Porto & North Tourism says that the recent opening of the UK, USA and Brazil markets is a positive step and fuels the hope of having “some interesting results”, mainly in the Douro sub-region, where these markets are very important.

“The Douro already has many booking requests, and they even chose the Douro over the Danube or the Rhine. But for that, they need to be able to travel to get here”, warns Luis Pedro Martins.