Only 22.4% of Portugal’s resident population enjoy the luxury of going on holiday, making it the penultimate country in a list of the 27 European Union countries, according to information from Eurostat analysed by Portuguese database Pordata.
The data is from 2011, the latest available, and shatters the notion that the Portuguese are habitual tourists.
On average, for longer stays over four nights, only 3.9% of the total tourists spent their holidays outside the country, meaning the vast majority of national tourists preferred to stay in Portugal (16.7%). The costs registered for national holidays amounted to €197, contrasting with the €505 average for international holidays.
The majority of these tourists are women, representing more than half (1,090,064) of the total (2,015,599). Also, a considerable amount of them are between the ages of 25 and 44 (698,255).
These surprising results leave Portugal only ahead of Bulgaria, which registers 17.5% of its population as practising international tourists in a list topped by Cyprus, Sweden and the Netherlands, with 85.1%, 78.4% and 70.3%, respectively.
