Porto and North tourism launches online platform to sell experiences

The president of Turismo do Porto e Norte de Portugal (TPNP) announced today that the “marketplace” platform will be available throughout this month, an online site for booking and buying tourist experiences and accommodation in the region.

“We launched marketplace this month. The ‘marketplace’ is precisely to put these companies on the radar, to allow their promotion and marketing, because it will allow a tourist to choose, but buy without having to leave the platform,” TPNP president Luís Pedro Martins told Lusa on the sidelines of the “BOOST – Building Better Future” event, organized by Nest-Tourism Innovation Center, which takes place today at Casa da Música, in Porto.

Asked about the importance of BOOST, Luís Pedro Martins noted that it is a “very important event for the region and for the country”.

“We registered in 2023 another national record and also a record in this regional case, but to maintain ourselves with this performance, with this performance, it is necessary to understand the trends, it is necessary to know what it is doing, namely to understand the tourist’s journey, to understand how he does the research, the destinations he wants to experience and also to understand how he buys”, he said.

In his speech as one of the 40 speakers at the event, Luís Pedro Martins recalled that the North region exceeded the barrier of six million guests in 2023 – 15% more than in 2022 -, and that the region is, in the national ranking, number two in relation to guests.

“We continue to grow in income,” he said, recalling that the North exceeded the barrier of 900 million euros, a value that also exceeded the year 2019, one of the best before the covid-19 pandemic.

Luís Pedro Martins warned, however, that to maintain those record numbers it is necessary to keep the region at the forefront.

“It is necessary to understand the tourist’s journey in digital, to know where it begins and the itineraries it makes. We need to be prepared and understand how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be at our service,” he said.

According to the official, the launch of the ‘marketplace’ will allow small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) to also be present in digital and can sell their experiences.

The digital platform will be available throughout this month and will start by having the tourist animation of the region available.

For example, if a tourist wants to have the experience of sailing boats in the Douro, they can buy there in the ‘marketplace’, or if they want to make an experience in Trás-os-Montes they can book immediately and buy on the platform.