England fans seeking solace from their World Cup woe were shunning Portugal as a holiday destination after the national squad knocked England out of the tournament, travel agents said on Tuesday.
Portugal beat England on penalties after Saturday's goalless quarter-final in Gelsenkirchen, causing misery for England supporters hoping their team could become world champions.
"Last week, Portugal was our fourth most-searched destination -- but since Saturday it's fallen down to 15th place," said John Bevan from online travel agent Lastminute.com.
"We expect interest will bounce back but at the moment the loss is still a bit raw. But we hope that English holidaymakers don't boycott the Algarve for long as a result of the match," he said.
Portugal's southernmost province of Algarve accounts for nearly half of all tourist arrivals to the country. Most visitors arrive during July and August.
British visitors accounted for 40.5 percent of all overnight stays in the province last year, according to figures from the Algarve Hotel and Tourism Businesses Association.
The president of the association, Eliderico Viegas, said the decline in interest in the Algarve as a tourist destination was most likely due to a lack of availability of hotel rooms in the province at this time of year.
"I don't believe football would have so much influence. At any rate they are already used to losing to Portugal just like we are used to losing to France," he said.
Portugal defeated England on penalties during Saturday's World Cup quarter-final match in Germany, just like they did at the same stage of Euro 2004.
France, who were to meet Portugal in the semi-finals in Munich yesterday, have beaten the Portuguese national team in their last seven meetings. Portugal's last victory over France came in 1975.
Meanwhile, competitor Thomas Cook said bookings surged by 35 percent on Sunday and Monday as fans looked to get away from it all following England's failure to make the World Cup semi-finals.
When Paddy Dwyer arrived in China in 1976, crowds jostled to catch a glimpse of him and his companions — the first Western soccer team to play in the country. China was emerging from the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, and on the brink of market reforms that would take the country from economic stagnation to explosive growth. “All we could see was lines of people running beside our bus, trying to look in the windows, to see their first visual of a white person,” he said. “It was all bicycles,” he said. “There were very few cars to be seen.” Dwyer,
A new NZ$683 million (US$404 million) stadium that was a symbol of Christchurch’s struggle to rebuild after a deadly earthquake struck the New Zealand city is to host its first match tomorrow in front of a sellout crowd. A magnitude 6.2 earthquake killed 185 people in February 2011 and toppled or damaged buildings, including the city’s old Lancaster Park. The stadium, which hosted international rugby and cricket, and was home to the Canterbury Crusaders, was badly damaged and never reopened. It was bulldozed in 2019 and turned into sports fields, leaving the Crusaders without a permanent home. Government funding for a new stadium was
Some of Clearlake Capital Group’s largest investors are growing increasingly concerned about how much time the company’s co-founders are spending on sports investments as they have struggled to complete the fundraising for the private equity firm’s latest flagship fund. One of Clearlake’s co-founders, Behdad Eghbali, has been spending what some investors described as a disproportionate amount of time on the firm’s investment in Chelsea Football Club in recent months. Now, co-founder Jose E. Feliciano and his wife, Kwanza Jones, are nearing a record US$3.9 billion deal to acquire the San Diego Padres. That personal investment by Feliciano has set off the latest
The Philadelphia Flyers and the Pittsburg Penguins on Wednesday put a squeeze on the penalty box in Game 3 of their NHL playoff series — with 11 players cramped inside their designated punishment areas. Each could have snapped a team photo after a melee broke out in the second period of the Flyers’ 5-2 win over the Penguins in their Eastern Conference first-round series. “It was a party in there,” penalized Flyers defenseman Nick Seeler said. The celebration extended into the joyous locker room after the Flyers took a 3-0 series lead. Penguins forward Bryan Rust slammed Travis Konecny to the ice behind the
RSS