It's not just foreign tourists: Portuguese nationals are booking more holidays this year - and are booking them earlier in competition with overseas visitors who are filling the Algarve’s hotels, apartments and villas.
National tourists are booking both overseas trips and domestic travel, the figures are up 6% on last year as recession eases and a holiday is back on the family agenda.
Easter and summer reservations are flooding in with many Portuguese travellers already reserving holiday accommodation for 2018.
With the Easter break less than a month away the Algarve is the preferred destination for Portuguese tourists.
It is hard to predict the weather, currently unstable, but temperatures steadily are rising and the region’s hoteliers are certain of a boom year, taking on extra staff and raising room prices for peak periods.
Many hotels are fully booked yet workers in the industry already are complaining that the boom in tourism, now accounting for 15% of Portugal’s exports, has seen them no better off while the hotel sector appears to be growing rich.
The coordinator of the Trade Union of Hotel, Tourism and Restaurants Workers of the Algarve, Tiago Jacinto, said on Radio Solar today that wages were lowered when the recession bit, but have not risen even though the industry has turned from famine to feast.
Workers are under increasing pressure to work more hours to make ends meet, with conditions getting worse, not better.
Currently "about 80% of the contracts in the Algarve region are not full-time" and in many tourism units "there is an increase in repression, pressure and psychological blackmail so that people do not get organised to fight for better wages."
Despite good results, the truth is that in recent years "companies have been reducing the number of workers and those that remain are being pressured" to cover the additional work, said the union rep.
And, if they complain, says Jacinto, many workers are threatened with disciplinary procedures and dismissal.
Another current trend is to hire staff on a part-time basis, who end up doing the hours of a full-time worker but with low pay levels.
