Tourism first in Portugal?
“72 percent holiday apartments” in a top location in Lisbon
By Céline Joufffrau and Andrea Sellmann
March 21, 2024, 10:00 a.m
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Tourism is an important economic factor for Portugal. There are now more holiday homes than apartments for locals around Lisbon Cathedral. Will the local people be left behind? And what else makes up Portugal’s economy?
Portugal is also a popular travel destination for German tourists. After the Corona low, the country is now recording visitor records again. This is evident not only on the beaches of the Algarve, but also in Lisbon. Fabian Schmiedel is office manager of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Lisbon. In the podcast “Wirtschaft Welt & Weit” he reports on a conversation with the district mayor of Santa Maria Maior, a central district of Lisbon: “This mayor told us that 72 percent of the apartments in his catchment area are holiday apartments,” reports Schmiedel.
High rents are driving the local population out of the city – and are also a reason for the shift to the right in the new elections that just took place in Portugal. The right-wing populist Chega party received 18 percent of the vote. What does this mean for the economy in Portugal? This question is the topic of the new podcast episode. After all, German-Portuguese economic relations in tourism are far from exhausted. Short distances and well-trained workers, as well as the comparatively low wage level, make Portugal a good partner.
More than 600 German companies have created around 700,000 direct jobs in Portugal. Thorsten Kötschau heads the German-Portuguese Chamber of Industry and Commerce and keeps a close eye on bilateral economic relations. For him, Portugal has long since left the status of an “extended workbench”: At the top of the Portuguese export list are precision parts for mechanical engineering, vehicles and chemical products, not textiles or food, reports Kötschau. For him, it is also the many small companies that make the country strong: Portugal, for example, has “become a leader in the production of bicycles.”
And Portugal also has plenty of potential in light of the energy transition: green hydrogen can be produced using solar energy. The country also has huge lithium reserves, which, according to Kötschau, “could be used to produce around half a million batteries for electric cars every year.” What about these projects? Host Andrea Sellmann discusses this with her guests Fabian Schmiedel and Thorsten Kötschau in the new podcast episode.
What does Germany have to do to continue to play an important role in the economic world of tomorrow? Who do we depend on? Which countries benefit from the new world situation? Andrea Sellmann discusses this with relevant experts in the ntv podcast “Wirtschaft Welt & Weit”.
You can find all episodes in the ntv app or wherever podcasts are available: at RTL+ music, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or Deezer. For all other podcast apps you can use the RSS feed.