“We have a daily Emirates flight, it is a direct flight from Lisbon to Dubai, and now, starting in July, Emirates will resume its second daily flight”, said Cibele Moulin, Dubai's senior manager of International Tourim Operations.

According to Cibele Moulin, with the resumption of the second daily frequency between Lisbon and Dubai, which had been suspended due to the pandemic, the number of air connections between Portugal and Dubai is already “almost at the level that existed before the pandemic”, just missing the resumption of the flight from Porto.

“Before, Emirates also flew from Porto and, perhaps, in the future we can resume this flight. At the moment, Lisbon is the main market and we have two flights from July onwards”, added the official.

Portuguese market

The Portuguese market, Cibele Moulin also revealed, recovered in the first quarter of 2022 and has already surpassed the numbers until March of the pre-pandemic period by 33 percent, which led to the fact that, in this period, the national market even reacted “a little above of the global average of the destination”.

“The Portuguese market, in particular, recovered 60 percent of the volume we had pre-pandemic. In other words, the Portuguese market even reacted a little above the destination's global average. This is very good for us.”

Overall, Dubai received, in the first three months of the year, around four million foreign tourists, which indicates a recovery of 44 percent.

“In other words, we recovered almost half of what we had before the pandemic from last year. It's a very quick recovery”, says Cibele Moulin, revealing that Expo Dubai, which took place between October of last year and March of this year, motivated 24 million visits to the destination.

Dubai Tourism currently has a special campaign in place in the Portuguese market, which was launched in April and which offers seven nights of accommodation for the price of five, with Cibele Moulin revealing that, due to this type of campaigns, the average stay of Portuguese tourists in Dubai is rising and is already at 5.4 nights, when in 2019 it was only two or three nights.

“Dubai sees Portugal as a market with a lot of potential and that is why we are investing so much in promotion”, concluded the official.