Brittany Ferries reports a surge in summer bookings from Ireland

Brittany Ferries vessel Armorique departs from Cork for Roscoff passing Cobh on its weekly Saturday journey. Picture: Eddie O'Hare

Brittany Ferries has reported a surge in summer 2022 bookings on routes between Ireland and France.

Emerging from two disastrous summer seasons where passenger numbers plummeted due to pandemic restrictions, the ferry company said it was looking to next year with optimism.

The company said combined reservations on its Cork to Roscoff and Rosslare to Cherbourg routes were up by 234%. The predominantly freight route between Rosslare and Bilbao in Northern Spain also saw passenger bookings increase by 80%.

Brittany Ferries carried more than 980,000 passengers in summer 2019 but the last two seasons combined drew in less than half that number.

In a statement, the company said its UK-France reservations are up by 40 per cent while on UK-Spain routes reservations rose by 35 per cent.

"By the end of October 2021, 188,878 passengers had booked travel for the holiday season, July to September 2022. That’s 48 per cent more than the 127,517 who had booked for the 2020 summer season - at the end of October 2019."

The wave of summer 2022 reservations follows welcome assistance from the French state. A grant of €45m was recently authorised by Paris to compensate for passenger travel restrictions that caused Brittany Ferries’ turnover to plummet by €220m in 2020 alone.

Alongside the grant, the French state announced a €10m waiver for debt and €6m aid from the Brittany Region.