Spain 
Italy 
Greece 
Government Wants VisitPortugal to Have Direct Link to Sales – Ana Mendes Godinho, SET
17 November 2017
The Secretary wants to utilise the portal’s ten million visitors for the “direct sale of goods.”
The Secretary of State for Tourism, Ana Mendes Godinho, said that she is working on a project to make VisitPortugal, which has received more than ten million visitors, more than just an information portal, allowing direct access to products on offer, leading “people to buy sooner than otherwise.”
The goal is “that digital marketing should increasingly be at the service of private offerings,” the minister announced Thursday to the AHP conference in Coimbra.
“I think we can gain scale in our digital marketing, in particular, by creating a direct link between our capacity regarding digital marketing and the sale of private goods throughout the Portuguese territories,” the Secretary of State stated.
“VisitPortugal has ten million visitors. If we can translate these ten million visitors into sales of Portuguese goods, and not just passing through information, we’ll be able to reach a target audience of ten million to whom we can sell products directly,” she explained.
“It is at this intersection that we have to take a very significant step” and “there are several associations that are currently developing resale and marketing platforms that add to sales,” announced Ana Mendes Godinho.
The Secretary of State stresses that, however, the task will be difficult, because it requires “ability to have platforms that can sell our product in an aggregated way.”
“The challenge is to get VisitPortugal to have this link where people can buy goods in the near future, buy Portuguese goods that are available to consumers, that is, not just use the site as an information platform, but that use it for direct sales, allowing us to boost sales and leverage our success with digital marketing.”
“Digital tools are potent, but [we must] bring all the stakeholders into the digital platform, maximising profitability and sales and commercialisation of our territories and Portugal in general.”
Ana Mendes Godinho revealed that she is “developing a model to better feed [digital marketing] and also to make digital marketing more and more available to the private sector.”
Original Story: Presstur
Translation: Richard Turner