The importance of low cost carriers for hotels in Lisbon and Porto cities

Abstract

 Low-cost airlines are today an unavoidable reality in aviation and tourism paradigm, operating in major Portuguese airports. Its business model is, normally, correlated with the variable price, in other words, to low prices, so the main objective of this investigation is to understand the importance of low cost carriers in the occupancy rate in the different categories of hotels, in the cities of Lisbon and Porto. The results show that as it is lowering the category of hotels, the greater the importance of the low cost carriers in the occupation of the units. This situation is more acute and notorious in Porto market, whose market shows more dependent on this air business model. However, the potential exit from the market of low cost carriers is pointed out for all hotel categories with the widespread recognition of a great loss of tourists and impacts on the volume of sales and occupancy of hotels.