Foreign.
Hello and welcome to the Urbanist, Monaco's program all about the built environment.
I'm your host, Carlotta Ravello.
Coming up, you can unlock another level of the city experience and even hear some unexpected Tokyo features like the ocean waves, the ham of birds and insects or or trees rustling their branches in the wind.
We visit two top destinations you may want to put in your travel plans for the year ahead.
From a Portuguese region where the hospitality sector is aiming to respond to a recent boom in visitor numbers, to the Japanese capital, where the urban soundscape can be just as attractive as the usual tourist draw cards.
That's all ahead in the next 30 minutes right here on the Urbanist with me, Carlotta Rebelo.
We start today in Portugal, which saw a record level of visitor numbers in the past year.
It would have been difficult to predict that a golden era of Portuguese hospitality would take place just over a decade after the European debt crisis and the troika bailout program which helped turn the country's coffers around.
One of the most popular destinations in the country is the Algarve, the region which stretches across mainland Portugal's southern coast.
But with record number of visitors drawn to towns like Lagos or the region's capital, far comes the need for more of just about everything, especially places to stay.
The global urbanism practice.
Broadway Malian has been working on two new hotels in Lagos recently, among many others across the whole of the country.
To find out more, I'm joined now by Margherita Caldeida, the head of Broadway Malian's Lisbon studio and of hospitality for the practice as a whole.
Margarida, thank you for joining me.
Can we start with the big picture for Portugal?
How has the hospitality industry been doing?
The hospitality industry in Portugal has been doing extremely well.
Numbers never have been so high in every aspect.
We have increasing number of visitors, we have increasing number of new hotels.