Faro: a Big Mac shaped by the Algarve's seasonal tourism cycle
Faro, the regional capital of the Algarve, posts a Big Mac price that's modest by Portuguese standards in winter and elevated in summer — the most pronounced seasonal pricing pattern in the Portuguese dataset. The Algarve attracts roughly 5 million tourists annually, predominantly British, German, and Dutch, and that demand wave compresses into about four months.
For Big Mac Index analysts, Faro is the clearest single-city demonstration of how seasonal tourism flows can produce intra-year price dispersion that no annual-average inflation statistic captures. Faro's August-versus-February Big Mac spread is wider than the Lisbon-Coimbra spread — meaning a single city's seasonal swing exceeds the entire intra-Portugal urban-rural gradient. Watch Faro's pricing through the 2026 tourist season as a barometer for European leisure-travel demand recovery.