Summary
In the 4th quarter of 2012, residents in Portugal made about 4 million tourism trips, 12.4% more than in the same period of 2011. This outcome is due to the significant increases in the number of trips made to “Visit relatives or friends” (+22.5%) and for “Professional and business reasons” (+21.1%), as opposed to trips made for “Leisure, recreational or holiday” reasons, which decreased by 5.9% when compared with the same quarter of the previous year. Trips made with foreign destinations had their relative weight reduced from 9.1% to 8.1% of the total. The average number of overnight stays per trip stood at 2.99, which corresponded to a year-on-year decrease of 8.0%. The number of overnight stays spent in free accommodation grew by 7.8%.