The Algarve’s hotels are less crowded with British holidaymakers this summer due to the fall of the value of sterling against the euro.
This 15% drop in the pound’s value, after a slim majority of the UK’s voters decided that ‘enough was enough’ and to leave the European Union, has been noticed in the Algarve as in July alone, hotels registered 56,000 fewer British tourists than a year earlier.
A report in Diário de Notícias claims that hoteliers already are worried about the effect of 'Brexit' on their businesses but have been cheered by a rise in German tourists who have taken up much of the slack.
"The British market is not just any market, it is our main supplier," said Elidérico Viegas, the president of the Algarve’s hotels association, AHETA, while calling for an organised strategy to prevent tourism in the Algarve losing out due to Brexit.
The numbers are still provisional, but AHETA's survey of its hoteliers shows that 270,000 Brits were staying in the Algarve in July, down 17.3% from a year earlier when about 326,000 holidaymakers from the UK chose the Algarve.
"We feel that the number of British people started to fall in May and we need to seek growth from other markets to compensate for this reduction," Elidérico Viegas warned.
Overall, fewer Britons are taking overseas holidays, down 4.6% in May, year on year. This trend is expected to worsen as the pound declines.
In the first seven months of the year, the number of British in the Algarve also is below that of a year ago, with a drop in hotel occupancy of 3.1%. The most affected regions are Vilamoura, Quarteira and Quinta do Lago with four and five star hotels the most affected.
The association believes that private businesses should be spending money on promotion in growth markets, noting that the biggest increases in tourism are from Germans, Poles, Swiss, Italians, Swedes, Canadians and Belgians.