Of course, like every other carrier, the impact of Covid-19 had been devastating. ![]() I asked her about how Covid-19 had affected her airline. If I had to live anywhere, it would be in a country that had essentially achieved herd immunity and where getting vaccinated was uncontroversial.īefore I left Lisbon, I had a chance to sit down with Christine Ourmières-Widener, the new CEO of TAP Air Portugal, for an interview. (I'll have an exclusive interview with Stern tomorrow.) The crowds from 20 may have thinned, but many of the Americans who are coming have decided to stay longer, some permanently. "People have had a chance to assess what's important in life in the last two years," explained Chitra Stern, CEO of the Portuguese luxury hotel chain Martinhal Resorts. The Americans will probably return next summer - unless the Omicron variant becomes a serious threat, which could very well happen. I'm not sure if Lisbon's tourism authorities were happy about that, but for the rest of us, it provided some much-needed breathing room. The Americans had started to return now, but slowly. My Portuguese friends filled in the details: It was wall-to-wall with tourists, a good percentage of whom were American. Lisbon was filled with tourists in January and February before Covid-19, and I could scarcely imagine what it was like during high season. ![]() I had spent a month in Lisbon in 2020, just before the pandemic, and apart from masking mandates and other Covid-19 precautions, it didn't feel much different.īut it was. I happened to be in Lisbon after a surge of cases in northern Europe and Austria's controversial decision to impose another lockdown. For all." Christopher Elliott Lisbon responds to a distant lockdown A billboard in Lisbon urges citizens to get vaccinated.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |