The Douro witnesses a “positive invasion” of visitors at Easter, mostly national, Spanish or Brazilian, registering a hotel occupancy rate of around 80%, according to Turismo do Porto and Northern Portugal.
Luís Pedro Martins, president of the Tourism Authority of Porto and Northern Portugal (PTNP), told Lusa that the hotel occupancy rate “is around 80%” in the Douro during this Easter period.
In this territory, there are also traditional Easter religious manifestations, but the main attractions are the landscape, the gastronomy and the wines.
Luís Pedro Martins said that most of the tourists who visit the Douro are Portuguese, but the “positive invasion” also brings many Spaniards, French and Brazilians.
The offer in the Douro is varied, for all wallets and all ages.
The Quinta da Pacheca, located next to the Douro River, in the municipality of Lamego, has as its most recent “business card” the “wine barrels“, suites in 10 large wine barrels and “have been a success “.
Sandra Dias, from Quinta da Pacheca, said that the hotel unit has a “100%” occupancy rate over the Easter long weekend.
In addition to the kites, the property has 15 more rooms in the hotel and is also under expansion works to build another 24 rooms.
Sandra Dias considered that, by this time, the “Douro is in high“. “The occupancy rate, the number of visitors, is high, is a reality. Joining the good weather conditions are together to be a great time,” he said.
She said that in the Douro, “it is becoming increasingly noticeable that seasonality is blurring” and that tourists seek the territory throughout almost the whole year and not only in the height of summer and harvest.
In the centre of the city of Peso da Régua, the Original Douro Hotel has also, as mentioned the responsible Alice Carneiro, sold out for this weekend.
The main clients are Portuguese, followed by Brazilians, Germans, English and some from the United States of America or Canada.
Opened almost a year ago, this hotel was implemented in a building from 1880, where there was the first hotel in the region and later the Pensão Douro, a history that was preserved in the recovery of space.
The In Douro Hostel & Wine Bar opens today in one of the buildings of the railway station of Peso da Régua and already has reserved for the weekend.
The project brought together the businessmen Vítor Martins and Bruno Magalhães and has as its theme the Douro and the trains, elements that are in the decoration of the hotel unit that, in this first phase, opens with nine rooms.
The goal is, according to Lusa Vítor Martins, to reach the “25 to 30 rooms” at a later stage.
The official justified this investment because tourism “is one of the business lines that is in high and developing” and because the Régua is the “heart of the Douro“, where many visitors who come by train, boat, car or motorhome
The president of the Tourism of Porto and North of Portugal, Luís Pedro Martins, assured that “the normality of the tourist activity” in the North region “is assured” with the end of the truck drivers strike of hazardous materials.
He added that “despite the strike, tour operators in the region had not yet transmitted significant cancellations.“
