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THE TOTAL NUMBER of oversesas trips to Ireland rose in the period November 2011 to January 2012 by 1.8 per cent compared with last year.
Overseas residents made 1,195,400 trips to Ireland over that period, up 22,800 trips on the same period a year ago.
The latest CSO visitor figures come after the organisation’s data showed a dip in visitors to Ireland towards the end of last year. The overall number of trips made to Ireland in 2011 rose 4.2 per cent to 6.5 million visits last year.
Visits by residents of Great Britain rose 4.7 per cent to 580,00 trips,
Meanwhile visitors from North America made 5.4 per cent fewer trips here (141,900 trips) and visits from residents of ‘other areas’ fell by 9.4 per cent to 68,400.
Irish residents made 1.6 per cent fewer trips overseas between November and January (down from 1,187,600 last year to 1,169,100).
Commenting on the CSO data, Minister for Tourism Leo Varadkar said they marked a good start to 2012 for Ireland’s tourism sector. He said that Ireland should focus on building on tourism from Great Britain, “our largest market for inbound tourism”.
“I believe the continued growth from Britain shows that the British tourist recognises that Ireland is accessible, different and offers great value once again.”
“The upcoming St Patrick’s week events right across our key markets,” he added, “along with the international launch of The Gathering Ireland 2013, the biggest ever tourism initiative in Ireland, will allow us to build on this good start to 2012. Tourism Ireland will be ‘greening’ landmarks throughout the world, reinforcing the message that there has never been a better time to come and experience what Ireland has to offer.”
Tourism Ireland also welcomed today’s figures, with CEO Niall Gibbons saying the organisation is expecting overseas visitor number to grow throughout the first quarter of 2012. However, he said that a number of factors are expected to continue impacting on tourism levels during 2012:
Overall sentiment and anecdotal feedback from tour operators and travel trade contacts in our key markets, as well as from people working in the tourism industry around Ireland, is cautiously optimistic – particularly for quarters two and three of 2012.
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Leo suggesting this is good news is less than true. These Irish, who made the lifestyle choice to emigrate, (presumably because the wide choice of jobs available to them weren’t up to scratch), coming home to visit their families is not Tourism. To suggest otherwise is disingenuous
OMG it turned out to be true, The queen of england and Obama did bring thousands of paying visitors to our shore. No wait a minute :-( its another load of crap from this government.
Looks like we’ve turned yet another corner! I’m dizzy now!
Its the guys from the IMF thats why its up
Last time they told us this every airline had carried less passengers to Ireland so as O’Leary put it “Unless they swam here there’s something wrong with the CSO figures”.
Poor O’Leary. Did he not get his cut? God love him. I hope he doesn’t have to sell his taxi-plate he bought so he can drive past the plebs stuck in traffic jams.
Ha Réada, I’m just saying it’s a fact the CSO figures are twisted and he just had a good joke on it last time so I borrowed and gave due credit.
Karl. You can borrow whatever you want from that fella. He won’t miss it. ;)
That’s true Réada ha ;)
Would love to know how these figures are calculated – do they base the residency of a person travelling on the country their flight/sailing originated from? In which case it would be blatantly obvious that the increased numbers are highly likely to be emigrants visiting home rather than tourists.
Its the guys from the IMF thats why its up how many times have them boys been here now.
Or it might be true. I was talking to a man who supplies to the tourism sector. word is that hotel bookings are up.
have your say