In the first four months of the year investment in tourism assets stood at €20 million. Despite the year getting off to a slow start, consultants insist that overseas investors have the appetite to invest and that the end of the Golden Visa programme will not put pay to their investment plans.
This is according to the real estate consultants Cushman & Wakefield which believes that by the end of the year, investment, including foreign investment in tourism assets, will reach €720 million by the end of the year according to a report in Dinheiro Vivo.
“Currently there are €720 million in hotel transactions in the pipeline in different phases of negotiation, which will possibly be completed by the end of the year”, said the consultant’s head of Hospitality, Gonçalo Garcia who added that the start of the year “got off to a slow start” with just one transaction to April worth €20 million.
This was less than the three transactions made in the same period in 2022 that reached €80 million.
However, the reduced amount of investment should not be of concern, and does not show a downward trend or contraction, neither a disinterest in the sector on the part of investors”, he says.
And continues: “The pattern of investment in the sector is usually greater in the second half. The success seen in the volume of investment in 2022 was not from the first months of that year” and added that the investment this year would exceed that of 2019 (€552 million) but would not be as high as in 2022.
Last year a new record in hotel investment was set at €900 million, driven by Operation Crow with the purchase of the ECS portfolio – Founded in 2006, ECS is a leading private equity and restructuring firm focused on the Portuguese market. ECS currently manages five funds directly in Portugal – by the US global investment management firm Davidson Kempner.
In terms of hotel openings, after two years of standstill caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, 10 hotels opened their doors between January and April, while the consultants expect that 50 projects will open by the end of 2023 with 110 projects in the pipeline by 2025 with 9,800 rooms.
The new hotels will mostly be four and five star units and Lisbon and Porto will attract the lion’s share of the investment.