The place clearly has something to offer British tourists, and indeed those from around the world. The masterplan must enhance the features that already draw in these tourists to better the experience offered.
With international tourism, air access becomes a key point. This is shown in the correlation of visitors in relation to regular air connections. The four top destinations in Portugal sit in order of frequency of available flights.
Fig 21. Weight of the 4 largest outbound markets to the destination (2005)
Porto currently sits third, however, with a masterplan that generates a lot of tourist interest, the frequency of air connections would inevitably increase and, as the clear correlation shows, more connections result in more visitors, which in turn generates larger revenue for the city. In a similar fashion, there is also correlation between the age of visitors and their average expenditure. Averagely, older tourists exhibit larger expenditure, however, there are a greater number of younger visitors with a lower visitor budget. Therefore, the masterplan must
Fig 22. Breakdown of tourists by age group (1992-2001)
take into account interventions of interest for both age groups. It must ensure that the large number of young tourists can enjoy their stay spending their money on food and drink from cafĂŠs, bars and restaurants, whilst the older generation have places of cultural and heritage importance along guided routes with carefully selected rest spots with amenities. Should the masterplan successfully tackle this, there is market for a greater increase in tourist revenue generated thereby increasing the success of the scheme for regenerating Porto.
Fig 23. Average annual expenditure on holidays per capita in Europe
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