It is funny how like with handbags, destinations too have their trends; For example, these days, you will see people everywhere carrying Anello backpacks �" these bags aren’t particularly good to look at, they are unwieldy and cumbersome to use in my opinion but suddenly it seems everywhere you look, they are on some traveller’s back.

Portugal first came to my consciousness through social media. Suddenly it seemed all my “friends” were going there and posting lovely pictures of its buildings, streets and food. And so when I was thinking of a summer holiday this year, Portugal became the IT destination for me. And it seems everyone else’s.

Eye-catching street art along Lisbon’s streets

Speaking to Luis Canto, whose family runs Presstur, the Portuguese travel trade publication, the tourism rush to his country began only about two years ago. “Suddenly we started seeing a growth in inbound tourism, from everywhere, the US, other parts of Europe and increasingly Asia,” he said. (In 2015, tourist numbers broke a record. That year, according to Statistics Portugal, the number of foreign tourists reached 10.18 million, a rise of 10% on the previous year.)

Getting ready for China with first direct flights

Indeed the day he and I met, Portugal’s tourism folks were in Macau promoting their destination ahead of the first direct flights to be launched by Capital Airlines between Lisbon and Beijing on July 26. The three-times-a-week direct service will undoubtedly be the start of big changes for this relatively small country of 11 million people.

In my 10 days in Portugal, I saw proportionately few travellers from Asia. On the Uniworld river cruise we were on, we were the only two from our region. Outside Lisbon, we hardly saw any. In Porto, the second largest city, there were a few Asian groups but nowhere to the extent you see in other European cities like Madrid, Barcelona or Istanbul.

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