Portuguese hotel industry; legislation, tourism history, accommodation
Abstract
Tourism is one of the most important and dynamic sectors of the Portuguese economy. Due to its nature and evolution in the last decades, this sector has seen profound changes in all its areas. The hospitality sector is one of them. For this reason, the legislation regulating accommodation has changed significantly since its origins, but especially in the last decades. This essay collects the successive legal statutes and interprets their evolution. The research proposes a division into five generations concerning the evolution of the regulatory framework for the hospitality sector: the first corresponds with the first law regulating the sector, the second with the beginning of mass tourism in Portugal, the third with the entry into the European Economic Community, the fourth with the massification and internationalisation of Portuguese tourism and, finally, the fifth generation overlaps the globalisation, the consolidation of the internet and the emergence of new and reformulated accommodation realities.
