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Portugal leases out abandoned forts, monasteries and historic sites for boosting tourism

Thursday, March 8, 2018

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PortugalIn spite of being declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2012, the hilltop town of Elvas in Portugal receives few visitors apart from occasional Spanish day-trippers.

 
Hence, for changing this, Portugal’s second largest hotel group, Vila Gale, is spending around five million Euros ($6.0 million) for converting a former convent into a luxury hotel.

 
Dozens of builders are working on the 17th-century whitewashed building, last used as a military court, for transforming it into an 80-room, four-star hotel that is set to open next year.

 
Since 2014, tourism has become a key driver of Portugal’s economy when the country exited a three-year 78 billion Euro international bailout that imposed harsh strictness laws on its citizens.

 
Now, the country’s goal is to ensure a constant year-round flow of tourists. Portugal’s socialist government is leasing abandoned monasteries, forts and other historic sites to private groups to be turned into hotels and other recreation centres.

 
Among other available sites is a fort in the north-western town of Caminha that has one of only three wells in the world located at sea. Another is a sanctuary in Cape Espichel near Lisbon where there was once an apparition of the Virgin Mary according to legends.

 
Tourism accounts for 12.5 percent of Portugal’s economic output and it has been growing steadily since 2011, with British, German and French visitors accounting for nearly half of all international visitors.

 
However, most tourists head to the sandy beaches of the Algarve, the capital Lisbon, with its wealth of historical monuments, and the northern Porto region and its nearby terraced hillside vineyards that overlook the Douro River. Maximum tourists are seen in late spring, summer and autumn, with least number of tourists during winter.

 
Portugal welcomed a record 18.2 million foreign tourists in 2016 and, although official figures for last year are not yet there, government and tourism sector officials believe that the figure was even higher.

 
The country has seen a surge in visitors partly due to security concerns in other popular sunshine holiday destinations, such as Egypt and Turkey.

 
Portuguese hotels welcomed 20.6 million guests in 2017, with an 8.9 percent rise over the previous year, helping the tourism sector create some 53,000 new jobs.

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