Portugal spent much of the past decade becoming one of Europe’s most successful tourism destinations. Over roughly the same period, it accumulated a housing deficit of more than 300,000 homes.
Those two facts are related, but they are not the same problem.
Tourism now has enormous weight in the Portuguese economy. In 2024 it generated €27.7 billion in travel exports, almost half of all Portuguese service exports.
It has also helped bring investment back into historic centres, restored buildings that might otherwise have remained empty and supported hundreds of thousands of jobs.
At the same time, Portugal simply did not build enough housing. Morningstar DBRS estimates that the gap between new households and completed homes has exceeded 300,000 since 2014.
Construction never fully recovered from the collapse after 2008, while labour shortages, material costs, limited land and slow licensing continue to restrict supply.
Tourism has added pressure to that shortage. Banco de Portugal has found that the expansion of local accommodation was associated with stronger house-price growth, particularly in Lisbon, Porto, Faro and Setúbal.
But removing tourism from the equation would not suddenly create the homes Portugal failed to build.
The more difficult question is how tourism and housing are planned together.
Portugal’s new Tourism Strategy 2035 is already moving in that direction, placing greater emphasis on territorial balance, local communities and residents’ quality of life rather than visitor numbers alone.
That becomes particularly important in places where hotels and tourism businesses struggle to recruit because workers cannot afford to live nearby.
A new hotel, resort or tourism district cannot be planned only around beds for visitors. At some point, the same conversation has to include homes for the people expected to work there.
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