Many large tech firms are moving into Lisbon, but it looks as if Portugal is fighting back against some of these industry giants. The first hit is, as expected, in the tourism sector, with the launch of a Portuguese-run hotel aggregator, Click2Portugal.com, according to a report by Essential Business.
Tourism is a huge industry in Portugal, and up until now, visitors have had to use an international intermediary like Booking.com or Trivago in order to secure accommodation. This may work for tourists used to international online booking sites, but it’s likely not ideal for the hotels themselves — so they decided to put their heft together and do something about it.
The Portuguese Hotels Association (Associação de Hotelearia de Portugal) officially launched the booking website Oct. 9, and it’s the first of its kind to cater specifically for Portuguese hotels and accommodation (but the site is also available in English, French, German, and Spanish). It allows tourists to book directly with the hotels — which should, in theory at least, result in better revenue for hotels and more competitive prices for consumers.
The platform was co-financed by the Competitiveness and Internationalisation Operational Programme and developed by GuestCentric, as well as being connected to VisitPortugal.com, the official tourism website for Portugal. Click2Portugal.com already has 300 hotels on the platform and is open to all of AHP’s members and national hotels.
And while it is unlikely that the new platform will take all traffic from the better-known aggregator sites, with Statistics Portugal reporting that tourist accommodation brought in €2.7 billion from 19.8 million guests in 2017 alone, it seems there is plenty to go around.
