LISBON (Reuters) - The number of foreign tourists visiting Portugal rose nearly 10% to a monthly record of 2.16 million in August, crowning a best-ever summer season for arrivals, data from the National Statistics Institute (INE) showed on Friday.
The number of August visitors had practically doubled over the past decade in what is traditionally the country's busiest month of the year for tourism, said the INE, which started compiling the data, measuring guests at hotels and other tourist accommodations, in 2013.
The number was also almost 10% higher than in the same month of 2019, before the COVID pandemic grounded flights and crippled global travel, and is despite Portugal like many Mediterranean countries suffering from wildfires this summer, though Portugal's were not notably worse this August than in previous years.
Tourism, a key driver of Portugal's economy, accounted for almost 15% of gross domestic product before the pandemic.
In the first eight months of 2023, arrivals rose by nearly 22% from a year ago and by about 11% from the same period of 2019 to reach 12.3 million.
Visitors from Spain represented the largest share of total arrivals in August, followed by those from France and Britain.