Support to Portugal’s tourism ecosystem: towards a more sustainable, resilient and digital tourism

The European Commission supported this flagship technical support project targeted at EU Member States wishing to build a more sustainable, resilient and digital tourism ecosystem. The flagship seeks to promote the digital and green transitions, strengthen regional cohesion and support the post COVID-19 recovery of tourism in Europe to make it fit for the future challenges in the global market. The flagship offers activity packages to enable Member States to engage in effective reforms in the area of the tourism ecosystem.

Context 

Sustainability is a central element of Portugal’s tourism development strategy but measuring and monitoring the sustainability of tourism is still a major challenge. While Portugal has developed a set of sustainability indicators, experience on how to use them at the local level to compare Portuguese destinations with relevant destinations abroad is not available. There is also a need to incorporate sustainability as a fundamental element of the strategy of companies and destinations. To achieve this, it is essential to build a robust monitoring framework for measuring sustainability while at the same time providing the sector with a framework of indicators for monitoring recovery and predicting the future performance of tourism in the country. Portugal has made significant progress in expanding the data sources available for decision-making in tourism. However, further progress is possible through the use of data science methodologies to stabilise demand forecasting models, monitor consumer behaviour and preferences in a timely manner, develop competitive intelligence tools and provide insights to manage destinations sustainably by anticipating trends and preventing overcrowding.

Support delivered

• Analysing indicators for measuring and monitoring the sustainability of tourism at the local level; 
• Identifying a draft set of indicators to measure the sustainability of tourism at local level and organising one technical workshop to refine it and support a pilot implementation; 
• Supporting a multi-country workshop on data sharing and integration; 
• Analysing international tourism demand-forecasting models; 
• Developing an initial feasibility assessment for an international tourism demand forecasting model for Portugal and organising one technical workshop to discuss it; 
• Analysing the measuring and monitoring the competitiveness and attractiveness of tourism destinations; 
• Identifying a draft set of indicators to measure the competitiveness and attractiveness of tourism destinations in Portugal and organising one technical workshop to scope the feasibility of developing and implementing it.

Results achieved  

The main results of this support project will be: 

• upgraded tourism statistics with focus on sustainability;
• an improved enabling framework for forward-looking decision making and sharing of up-to-date tourism data for citizens, entrepreneurs, and policy makers.