Fexco sees 35% rise in sales of sterling and dollars to Irish travelling abroad

SALES of sterling and dollars to Irish people travelling abroad have jumped 35% year-on-year, payments company Fexco said yesterday.

The Kerry-based financial services provider said that, in the period between January and May, it also converted 14% more sterling and dollars into euro for tourists coming into Ireland.

Fexco foreign exchange business director Anne Costelloe said the growth of inbound tourism would continue during the year and would benefit the company.

She said the increase was largely due to a recovery in American tourist numbers and low airline fares encouraging travel to Ireland from Britain.

Fexco opened a new foreign exchange outlet in the Dublin Tourism Office near Dublin’s Grafton Street yesterday. The group has over 1,000 such outlets in Ireland, Britain and Malta.

Ms Costelloe said the weaker dollar had resulted in an increase in the number of Irish people travelling to America.

The company also has noticed a trend of customers buying dollars at favourable rates even if they did not plan to travel to America for a number of months.

She said Fexco had also seen increased traffic from its business customers and that its alliance with global payments giant Western Union was performing well.

The euro reached a lifetime high against the dollar earlier this year when it traded near the $1.30 mark but has since weakened to $1.21. This made trips to America significantly more affordable.

Customers were also buying more exotic currencies as they began to plan holidays in locations that were previously off the radar of Irish tourists, said Ms Costelloe.

The most common currencies requested by Fexco customers so far this year included the Cypriot pound, the Australian dollar, Thailand’s baht, and the Czech koruny.