170,000 Portuguese visited Brazil in 2014
17/07/2015
Last year, Brazil received nearly 6.5 million international tourists, which was a new record for the country. Portuguese visitors were about 170 thousand, making Portugal climbing one place in the ranking comparing to 2013, thus occupying the 10th position. The podium is dominated by Argentina with almost 1.75 million tourists, followed by the USA (657 000) and Chile (337 000).
São Paulo remains the main gateway in the country, followed by Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande do Sul. The data are part of the Statistical Yearbook of Tourism 2015 by the Tourism Ministry, which also reveals that 70.6% of foreign tourists used the plane as a means of transportation to get to Brazil.
According to the Brazilian Tourism Institute press release, Vinicius Lummertz (President) stated that "Hosting major sports events like the World Cup last year and the Olympics in 2016 leverage the Brazilian tourism in an extraordinary way."
Henrique Alves, Minister of Tourism, agrees with the importance of the World Cup, "The figures show that was a big deal for tourism. Now the challenge is to ensure conditions for the sector to grow continuously."
