"In the third quarter of 2021, residents in Portugal made 7.7 million trips, which corresponded to an increase of 21.3 percent year-on-year (+83.9 percent in the second quarter of 2021), however, still below the values recorded in the same quarter of 2019 (-11.1 percent, a period where 8.7 million trips were made)," the National Statistics Institute (INE) advanced.

In that period, 454.8 thousand trips were made to foreign destinations (+180.9 percent compared to the third quarter of 2020; -57.2 percent when compared to the third quarter of 2019), corresponding to 5.9 percent of the total (12.3 percent in the third quarter of 2019).

Domestic travel, meanwhile, grew by 17.1 percent (-4.6 percent compared to the third quarter of 2019) totalling 7.3 million, which corresponded to 94.1 percent of the total (-3.4 percentage points compared to 2020, but +6.4 percentage points compared to the same period of 2019).

"In both cases the values recorded in the third quarter of 2021 corresponded to the highest since the beginning of the pandemic," INE highlights.