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Portugal Commerce and Tourism
Portuguese domestic commerce was dominated by numerous
small,
family-owned firms concentrated in the major urban areas.
Retail
outlets, around 80,000 in the late 1980s, were declining
in
numbers as supermarkets increased their market share. At
the same
time, upscale but smaller sales outlets were growing in
number,
replacing traditional retail shops. In both retailing and
wholesaling, foreign investor participation was helping to
accelerate the modernization of Portugal's domestic trade.
Foreign tourism was an important component of
Portugal's
services sector. Foreign exchange receipts from tourism
income
amounted to US$2.57 billion in 1989, compared with US$0.55
billion in 1973 and US$1.15 billion in 1980. This service
industry directly employed an estimated 150,000 persons,
equivalent to nearly 4 percent of the active labor force
that
year but indirectly had strong secondary impacts,
particularly on
construction. From 1973 to 1990, tourism income as a share
of GDP
was roughly stable, fluctuating between 5 and 6 percent.
The
mid-1970s proved to be an exception: the brief period of
radical
politics combined with the global recession led to a
halving of
foreign arrivals to 2 million in 1975 from over 4 million
in 1973
and to a sharp reduction in the receipts/GDP ratio to 2
percent
from 5 percent in the earlier year. There were 7.3 million
foreign arrivals in 1981, 16.5 million in 1989, and an
estimated
18.4 million in 1990.
Of the 16.5 million recorded foreign visitors in 1989,
93
percent were from Western Europe. Spaniards, not
surprisingly,
constituted three-fourths of all visitors, although most
of them
were excursionists, that is, visitors staying for a period
of
less than twenty-four hours. Visitors from Britain,
although only
7 percent of the total, contributed about 30 percent of
tourism
earnings.
Portugal offered many attractions to vacationers from
northern Europe and the United States--the medieval
castles and
other architectural landmarks, a number of which served as
government-operated inns; the more than 100 beaches along
the
southern coast of the Algarve; and the resort area
stretching
westward from Lisbon at the mouth of the Rio Tejo, notably
the
famed resorts of Cascais and Estoril. Other attractions
included
Portugal's mild climate and its relatively low cost.
The major goals of the Portuguese government for this
significant export industry were to improve the quality of
tourism services, to attract visitors to northern
locations, to
safeguard the environment, and to encourage investment in
tourism
facilities.
Data as of January 1993
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