Asian Markets in Portugal: Korea Up 49% Since 2019, China Still Below It and a One-Year Indonesian Surge at Fátima

How big is Asia in Portuguese tourism?

On Eurostat's count, which covers hotels, short-stay accommodation and campsites, residents of Asian countries spent 2,697,495 nights in Portugal in 2025 and made 1,323,162 arrivals. Nights were 24.5% above 2019 and 16.1% above 2024. Over the same six years Portugal's foreign nights grew 16.3%, to 60,022,455, so Asia gained share: from 4.20% of foreign nights in 2019 to 4.49% in 2025 (derived).

The arrivals share moved the other way, from 7.22% to 6.76% (derived). Asian visitors are staying slightly longer in each establishment: 2.04 nights per arrival in 2025 across the continent. That figure is per establishment, so a traveller who sleeps in Lisbon, Porto and Coimbra counts as three arrivals. The real trip is longer. Turismo de Portugal's market page quotes 5.6 nights for Korean trips, from Amadeus booking data, which measures something different.

Money tells the same story at a smaller scale. Banco de Portugal's travel credits, published by Eurostat, put Asia at €978 million in 2024, 3.5% of Portugal's €27.7 billion in travel receipts and almost exactly its 2019 share of 3.7%. The Asia aggregate almost certainly includes the Gulf states and Israel. The four named markets, China, South Korea, India and Japan, earned €352 million between them in 2024, about 36% of it.

The long series explains why Asia still looks small. Japan was Portugal's original Asian market: 173,038 nights in 2005, more than China, Korea and "other Asia" put together in 2005. China and Korea then multiplied roughly sixteen-fold to 2019, on the back of European tour circuits, a Chinese middle class travelling abroad and, from 2017, Portugal's first direct flight to China. The pandemic erased almost all of it: 366,066 Asian nights in 2021. Recovery has been uneven, and the gap between Korea and Japan is now the widest in the series.

The four published markets, ranked

Turismo de Portugal's TravelBI market pages, which reproduce INE's accommodation survey without campsites, give 2025 figures for China, South Korea, India and Japan. They are the only official source that names India. On that basis China ranked 16th of all source markets by nights, Korea 19th, India 26th and Japan 33rd.

Two points stand out. India grew slowest of the four in 2025, at 10.8% for nights and 8.7% for guests, which contradicts the most common line about the Indian market. And Korea is the only market whose regional spread includes the Oeste e Vale do Tejo, the region that has contained Fátima since INE moved to the NUTS 2024 map. TravelBI puts 12.6% of Korean nights there, about 59,900 nights (derived). None of the other three markets shows that region among its main destinations. That is the strongest evidence in the accommodation data for a Fátima link, and it points to Korea.

Every Asian market leans on Lisbon. Grande Lisboa takes between 39.8% (Korea) and 56.5% (Japan) of nights, Norte takes most of the rest, and the Algarve matters only for India, at 14.3%. That concentration matters for Lisbon, whose hotel market was already losing occupancy in 2026, as our Lisbon tourism statistics article showed. Hotels take 72–77% of Chinese, Korean and Japanese nights and 68.1% of Indian nights; short-term rentals take 11.6–18.1%.

South Korea: the growth market, built on one flight

Korea is the clearest story in the Asian data. Nights rose from 318,989 in 2019 to 476,614 in 2025 (Eurostat), and grew 34.5% in 2025 alone. Korean receipts rose from €64 million in 2019 to €97 million in 2024, according to Banco de Portugal data published by Eurostat, which marks the 2025 value confidential. Turismo de Portugal's Korea page gives about €140 million for 2025, in two slightly different versions (€139.7 million and €140.1 million). If that figure holds, Korean spending more than doubled in six years.

The cause is visible in the air statistics. Asiana flew Seoul to Lisbon twice a week from October 2019 until the pandemic. Korean Air started a charter in September 2024, made it a scheduled route that October and added a fourth weekly flight from 21 September 2026. Eurostat counted 21,830 passengers between Portugal and South Korea in 2024 and 76,796 in 2025, the first full year of the Korean Air service. Turismo de Portugal announced in December 2025 that it would open an office in Seoul in 2026.

Against the rest of Europe the gain is larger still. Portugal took 4.16% of all Korean nights in the EU in 2019 and 6.63% in 2025 (derived from Eurostat). Its share of all foreign nights in the EU was 3.90%, so Portugal now draws Korean travellers at 1.7 times its weight. Portugal recorded about 64% as many Korean nights as France and 39% as many as Spain (derived).

The 2026 data show growth slowing on volume. TravelBI's January–July report puts Korean nights up 13.0% and guests up only 2.2%, which suggests longer stays per establishment and fewer new arrivals. A Korean pilgrimage and Camino market reinforces the trend: South Korea is consistently among the top Asian groups at Fátima, and roughly 14,800 Koreans received a Santiago Compostela in 2025, according to an approximate figure from a tour operator. The Pilgrim's Office does not publish nationality by route, so the number walking the Portuguese Way is unknown.

China: the largest Asian market, still below 2019

China remains Portugal's largest Asian market by nights and by spending. It has not recovered. Eurostat counts 596,719 Chinese nights in 2025, 1.7% below 2019, and 333,079 arrivals, 12.1% below. Banco de Portugal travel receipts from China were €174 million in 2025 against €225 million in 2019, a fall of 23%. Turismo de Portugal's own 2019 figure, €224 million, matches the Eurostat series.

In May 2024, at ITB China, Turismo de Portugal's president set targets of 500,000 Chinese guests and one million nights a year by 2026, and receipts back at the 2019 level. On 2025 results the guest target was 67–68% met and the nights target 60% (derived). China grew 15.6% in nights in the first quarter of 2026, so the 2019 level of nights is likely to be passed this year. The one-million-nights goal is out of reach.

Air access explains part of the shortfall. Beijing Capital Airlines opened Portugal's first China route, Hangzhou–Beijing–Lisbon, in July 2017 and carried more than 80,000 passengers in its first year, on company figures. The route survived the pandemic only intermittently. It ran four times a week in 2024 and 2025 and was down to two weekly flights by June 2026. A seasonal weekly Beijing Daxing–Lisbon service started on 22 June 2026, partly because Middle Eastern hubs were disrupted. Eurostat counted 55,359 passengers between Portugal and China in 2024 and 43,527 in 2025, below the 2018 figure of 50,046.

Chinese visitors spend heavily where they do come. The Finance Ministry's 2025 anti-fraud report, published by ECO in August 2026, named China's average tax-free invoice, €1,437, as the highest of any nationality it listed, ahead of the US at €1,055 and Brazil at €436. China also accounts for the largest block of golden visas: 5,374 of the 12,497 investment residence permits granted between October 2012 and July 2023, or 43% (derived from SEF data). AIMA has published no nationality breakdown since.

Japan: the market that has not come back

Japan is the laggard. Japanese nights peaked at 270,430 in 2019 and were 187,688 in 2025, 30.6% lower. Arrivals fell 34.8%. Receipts held up better, at €52 million in 2025 against €54 million in 2019, which implies higher spending per visit. There is no direct flight; Eurostat records fewer than 500 passengers a year between the two countries since 2019.

Turismo de Portugal set a target in April 2025 of €100 million in Japanese receipts within three years, which would roughly double the 2025 level. The same announcement described Japan as Portugal's "17th most important market" without saying on what measure. On INE nights it was 33rd. Growth in 2026 has been modest: nights up 5.3% and guests up 4.3% in January–July, according to TravelBI.

India: a resident community larger than its tourist market

India is the most misread of the four markets. As a source of tourists it is small and growing slowly: 247,100 nights and 107,800 guests in 2025 on the INE basis, up 10.8% and 8.7%. As a source of receipts it is growing faster. Banco de Portugal credits from India rose from €35 million in 2019 to €64 million in 2025, up 83%. And as a resident community it is far larger than any other Asian population in Portugal.

AIMA's 2024 migration report counts 98,616 Indian residents at the end of 2024, Portugal's second-largest foreign nationality. Nepal (58,086), Bangladesh (55,199) and Pakistan (41,508) take South Asia's total above 250,000. By comparison there were 30,734 Chinese residents, 2,193 Filipinos, 1,238 Indonesians and 493 South Koreans. Our AIMA backlog tracker documents how that population grew. Much of the travel between India and Portugal is therefore visits to family, trips home and migration rather than leisure. That is our inference; no Portuguese source splits Indian travellers by purpose.

Access is the other constraint. There is no direct flight: Eurostat counts six passengers between Portugal and India in 2025, which reflects the absence of a route rather than of travellers. Indian visitors connect through the Gulf, Istanbul or another European hub. Air India, a Star Alliance member, sells its code on some TAP flights within Europe; whether TAP stays in Star Alliance depends on the sale covered in our TAP privatisation analysis. Indians also need a Schengen visa. Secondary sites citing European Commission data put the refusal rate at Portugal's New Delhi consulate at 19.2% in 2024 and 22.6% in 2025, on 12,385 applications. We could not open the Commission's consulate-level workbooks to confirm those figures, so they are reported here as unverified.

The Fátima link: what the pilgrim registers show

The Sanctuary of Fátima counted 6,478,323 pilgrims in 2025 across 11,170 celebrations. That is an attendance count. One person at five masses counts five times, and there is no count of unique visitors or of foreigners as a whole. Our Centro region article explains why Fátima's municipality, Ourém, now sits in the Oeste e Vale do Tejo region rather than Centro. What the Sanctuary does publish is a register of organised groups that announce themselves: 5,608 groups in 2025, 4,332 of them from abroad, from 84 countries.

That register is where Asia becomes visible. In 2025 the Sanctuary reported that Asia supplied 22.3% of foreign pilgrims in groups, ahead of the Americas at 20% and behind Europe at 55%. The Catholic news agencies that reported Asia "surpassing the Americas" are correct on the Sanctuary's numbers, with two caveats. The 2024 comparison (Asia 17%, Americas 27%) was a share of groups, not of pilgrims. And the change was partly a fall in US and Mexican groups.

Indonesia is the striking line. Its pilgrims in groups rose 9.8 times in one year (derived), from 1,426 to 13,980. The Sanctuary linked the rise to the Catholic Jubilee of 2025, and Indonesian operators sold Jubilee packages combining Rome, Lourdes and Fátima. Indonesia has about 8.3 million Catholics, 3% of its population, according to the Holy See's 2024 figures, which is a large travelling base for a minority faith. The evidence that this lasts is weak. In January to May 2026 the Sanctuary's top five foreign markets were Spain, Poland, the US, Italy and South Korea, and Indonesia was missing from the list of groups registered for the 13 May pilgrimage.

The steadier Asian Fátima markets are the Philippines and South Korea. They led Asia in 2019 (Korea 116 groups, the Philippines 99), in 2023 and in 2024 (the Philippines 194, Korea 173). Both have large Catholic populations: about 93 million in the Philippines and 5.95 million, 11.3% of the population, in South Korea. Koreans do not need a visa; Filipinos, Indonesians, Vietnamese and Indians do. India has about 23 million Catholics, concentrated in Goa and Kerala, and ranked tenth at Fátima in both 2024 and 2025. On the Sanctuary's data alone it is the weakest of the five Asian pilgrim markets.

Asian group pilgrims were growing before the Jubilee. They were 31,561 in the 2017 centenary year, about 8.4% of foreign group pilgrims (derived). In 2019 the share was about 12%, and in 2024 Asia supplied 17% of foreign groups. In 2025 the four named Asian countries alone sent 32,587. What the registers cannot show is how many of those pilgrims slept in Fátima. Ourém recorded 1,151,780 nights in 2023, still below the 1,298,259 of 2017, with an average stay of 1.63 nights and bed occupancy of 34.7% against 48% nationally. Most pilgrims stop for one night or none. Ourém plans a €2 tourist tax from 2027, which still needs a municipal assembly vote and is opposed by the Sanctuary and local hoteliers.

Portugal against Spain, Italy, Greece and France

One finding runs against the general impression that Portugal is peripheral for Asian travellers. Between 2019 and 2025 Asia's weight in Portugal's foreign nights rose, from 42.0 to 44.9 nights per 1,000. In every comparator it fell: Spain from 32.4 to 30.4, Italy from 79.1 to 69.3, Greece from 39.5 to 33.2, France from 88.4 to 70.4 and the EU as a whole from 61.4 to 53.0 (all derived from Eurostat).

The reason is China. Chinese nights fell 42.6% in France, 35.2% in Greece and 24.5% across the EU between 2019 and 2025, while Portugal held almost level. Portugal's share of the EU's Chinese nights rose from 2.73% to 3.56% (derived). In other words, Portugal lost less than its neighbours from the slow Chinese recovery and gained more than them from Korea. Italy and France still receive far more Asian visitors in absolute terms: Italy recorded 20.9 million Asian nights in 2025 and France 10.6 million, against Portugal's 2.7 million.

Set against the markets this series has already measured, the scale becomes clear. Asia as a single bloc would rank sixth by nights, between France and Brazil. The United States alone added 2.76 million nights between 2019 and 2025, more than Asia's whole 2025 total, as our US versus Spain analysis showed.

Risk: hubs, visas and a single route

Most Asian travel to Portugal runs through connecting hubs. Eurostat counted 593,013 passengers between Portugal and the United Arab Emirates in 2025, 584,637 with Türkiye and 171,054 with Qatar. Those flows include Portuguese travellers and onward passengers to Africa and the Middle East, but they are the main path from India, South-East Asia and much of China. The conflict involving Iran from late February 2026 disrupted Gulf routings. Diário de Notícias reported in July 2026 that Asian bookings for Fátima had "collapsed" as tour operators cancelled European trips; the article's figures were not accessible.

Lisbon's airport is the other constraint. A long-haul Asian carrier needs slots at an airport that, as our Lisbon airport capacity article showed, is running at its declared limit of 38 movements an hour. Porto has more room but no Asian route. The China flights that do exist have survived by being seasonal or by running through a second Chinese city.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers. If you are travelling from Asia, expect to connect: only Seoul (Korean Air, four weekly flights from September 2026) and seasonally Hangzhou and Beijing (Beijing Capital) fly direct to Lisbon. Indian, Indonesian, Filipino and Vietnamese passport holders need a Schengen visa and should apply early. For Fátima, most pilgrims visit as a day trip from Lisbon, about 130 km away, and the largest pilgrimages fall on 12–13 May and 12–13 October; other dates give an easier visit. Our Fátima pilgrimage guide covers transport and timing, and the Lisbon travel guide covers the city where half of Asian nights are spent.

Tourism businesses and investors. Treat Asia as four markets with different economics. Korea is the only one with demonstrated momentum, and it rests on one airline. China is the highest spender per tax-free invoice and is still below 2019, with growth capped by air capacity rather than demand. India is better approached through the resident community and the wedding and MICE segments Turismo de Portugal targets than as a mass leisure market. The pilgrim markets of Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam move in groups, book through specialist operators and stay one night in Fátima; they reward relationships with those operators and with the Sanctuary rather than general marketing. A second direct Asian route, or more Korean Air frequencies, would change the assessment upward; a cut to the Chinese routes or a lasting Gulf hub disruption would change it downward.

Journalists and analysts. Citable figures: Asian nights 2,697,495 in 2025, 4.49% of foreign nights and 24.5% above 2019 (Eurostat); Korea 476,614 nights, +49.4% on 2019 and 6.63% of the EU's Korean nights; China 596,719 nights, −1.7% on 2019, and €174 million in receipts, −23%; India 247,100 nights (INE basis) and €64 million in receipts; Japan 187,688 nights, −30.6%; Indonesia 13,980 pilgrims in registered Fátima groups in 2025. Do not repeat "India is the fastest-growing Asian market" (it was the slowest of four in 2025), "a million Chinese visitors" (a nights target), "€642 a day" (tax-free shopping), or Fátima's 6.48 million as a visitor count. The series finding this article adds: for the first time a whole continent's main markets cannot be read from Portugal's accommodation statistics, because Eurostat publishes three Asian countries out of more than forty and the rest sit in one line.