Uber was declared legal in April this year after transport and taxi unions failed to get the company stopped in its tracks.
The government u-turn included the setting up of a working party to look at how Uber and other app-based transport companies such as Cabify could be included in existing legislation or whether new rules needed to be set.
José Mendes, the Secretary of State for the Environment said in April everything will be in place in just a couple of months, that Portugal’s taxi drivers serve a different market sector and both types of service can operate side by side: the old and the new.
A limited Uber service was launched in the Algarve on June 7th centred around Faro airport offering two services for passengers, the low-cost UberX service, and marginally more expensive UberXL to provide vehicles with room for seven passengers.
Union and association bosses continue to challenge the government’s enlightened decision to allow Uber to operate, calling the decision "a total deregulation of the market.”
Florencio de Almeida from transport union Antral, said in April, "You can count on a street protest that will be unstoppable. The associations will not allow the sector to be deregulated and the regulation of what is illegal."
Uber has just completed two months of trading in the Algarve and claims to have exceeded expectations with travellers from more than 60 countries choosing Uber to travel within the region.
Uber estimates that four million tourists will choose the Algarve this year and has seen customers coming from as far away as Indonesia, Uruguay, New Zealand and South Africa.
The company reports that 55% of the trips booked in the Algarve have been made in the evening and early morning, between 20:00 and 05:00, with hotspots such as Vilamoura and Albufeira accounting for 50% of the chosen destinations.
The most likely nationalities to use Uber are tourists from America, the UK and France who have been using the new service to get from the airport to their holiday destination and then to go on nights out without the worry of drink-driving, the expense of traditional taxis or holiday rate car hire charges.
