Big increase in foreign travel
Almost three million Irish people travelled abroad during the first half of the year, it emerged today.
New figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) revealed Irish citizens made 1,626,000 trips outside the country between April and June 2005 – an increase of 14% on the same period last year.
In the first three months of the year 1,208,000 people travelled abroad - compared with 1,039,000 2004.
Between April and June around 965,000 people cited holidays as their reason for travelling, 345,000 were visiting friends or relatives and less than 200,000 were making business trips.
There was an 11% increase in the number of European visitors to Ireland, while the number of visits by residents of the USA and Canada fell by 1% between April and June.
Mr O’Donoghue said figures from the North American market were down on last year which may have been affected by a larger decrease in the number of US visitors to Britain, through which many tourists to Ireland travel from.
But the figures revealed that earnings from visitors to Ireland equalled the expenditure by Irish visitors abroad.
Tourism Minister John O’Donoghue said: “The first six months of this year has shown that Mainland Europe is the star performer in terms of Irish tourism. This may also reflect the strong increase in air access to Ireland from that region.”
Irish residents travelling abroad on air cross-channel routes grew by 21% in the second quarter of the year, however, the number travelling on sea cross-channel routes recorded a drop of 17%.
The CSO revealed over 1.8m overseas visits were made to Ireland in the second quarter of 2005, compared with 1,762,000 in the same period last year.
Mr O’Donoghue welcomed the 4% increase in overseas visitor numbers in the first half of the year.
The number of bednights spent in guest houses and B&Bs by overseas visitors to Ireland dropped by 12% in the second quarter of 2005 compared to the previous year.
