In order to contribute to the identification of changes in the consumption habits of the Portuguese, in specific periods such as the World Youth Day, SIBS releases a set of indicators and aggregate data in an infographic format, in a clear and factual way, and with comparisons with previous periods.
As you can see in the attached infographic, and based on data from SIBS Analytics , in the week before the World Youth Day, that is, from 26 to 31 July 2023, when various activities toke place in the national Dioceses, operations with foreign cards on the MULTIBANCO Network increased by 18% compared to the same period of the previous year (July 27 to August 1, 2022). This evolution contributed to an overall growth of 6% in the number of operations on the MULTIBANCO Network, throughout the national territory.
When analyzing the origin of foreign cards, it is possible to see that the countries with the highest growth in the number of operations, compared to the same period last year, were Mexico (+147%), Australia and Singapore (both with +142%), New Zealand (+126%) and Republic of Korea (+125%).
If we analyze only the countries where the last five editions of WYD took place (Panama, Poland, Brazil, Spain and Australia), we see that the number of operations average growth is 25%, that is, 7p.p more. than the total number of operations carried out with foreign cards in the period under analysis.
With regard to the countries that organized the five previous editions of WYD, it is visible that, in all of them, there were more visitors than in the same period, with a total variation of +25%. Of note is a significant increase of +276% in visitors to Panama.
Analyzing the main destinations of WYD participants in the national territory, in the days with activities in the various national Dioceses that precede the event, there was a 57% increase in the number of visitor transactions in Santarém (district where the Sanctuary of Fátima is located), 26% in Coimbra and twenty three percent in Évora.
As a curiosity, it should also be noted that in the period under review, Portugal received visitors from countries that were not in the national territory in the previous week (19 – 25 July) such as Anguilla, Belize, Cook Islands, Salomao Islands, Djibouti, New Caledonia , Central African Republic, Saint Vincent And The Grenadines, Samoa, American Samoa and Vanuatu.