Portugal receives the “Safe Travels” stamp

Portugal is the first European country to receive the “Safe Travels” stamp, which was created by the World Travel & Tourism Council, better known as WTTC. According to this, this stamp was specially designed to allow travelers to recognize governments and enterprises from around the world, to follow the health and hygiene protocols promoted by the WTTC. Thus, hotels, restaurants, airlines, cruise lines, tour operators, outdoor shopping, transportation companies, airports, and destinations that comply with these standardized protocols may receive the seal.

In order to receive this seal, enterprises must follow the protocol appropriate to their type of business found on the WTTC online page, and then they must complete a form and in the end, they will be redirected to a page where they can add their company logo to the “Safe Travels” stamp. The WTTC asks that when obtaining the seal, it should be placed in the email, online page among other locations of the enterprise, and for this seal to be shared on the company's social networks with the hashtag #SafeTravels.

Having this in mind, this stamp is very similar to the seal already created by Portugal, the “Clean & Safe” seal, which brings benefits to Portuguese enterprises that were already aware of this procedure and this knowledge is thus easily transferable to the procedure of World Travel & Tourism Council.

This is not the first time that the WTTC congratulates Portugal, recently this organization published a report in which Portugal, for the 5th consecutive year, in terms of tourism, overcomes the growth of the global economy and reveals that the important contribution of the tourism sector to the country's GDP will be crucial in Portugal's economic recovery from this terrible pandemic.

This report indicates that during 2019, the tourism sector supported 18.6% of the country's total workforce. It also generated 34.6 billion euros for the Portuguese economy's GDP, an increase of 4.2% over the previous year, thus surpassing the overall world GDP growth, which grew only 1.6% in the same year.

This growth is due to Portugal's ambitious strategies, which led to the growth of unusual markets such as the USA, Canada, among others, which also brought other awards to the country, such as being nominated for “Europe's Leading Destination” in World Travel Awards for 3 consecutive years.

What this means is that, in the face of COVID-19 situation, we cannot simply abandon the tourism sector, the solution is the creation of protocols such as those necessary for the attribution of the “Safe Travels” and “Clean & Safe” stamps, confirming then that organizations follow them and thus achieve a safe and controlled environment, where tourists can stay and the residents allow it without feeling threatened.