Cheap flights tempt Irish to travel

WE’RE travelling abroad more, but for shorter holiday breaks and business trips, statistics released yesterday show.

And the main reason is cheaper air fares.

“With the low-cost carriers flying frequently to a variety of places you’d have people going for four and five days,” said Michael Dooley, president of the Irish Travel Agents’ Association yesterday.

“The trend is also influenced by the fact that a lot of people own property abroad and they would take frequent trips,” he said.

Irish business travellers are also shortening their foreign stays to cut costs.

Figures from the Central Statistics Office show the average length of stay of Irish visitors abroad fell from 9.2 nights to 7.7 nights between October and end-December 2003.

We spend a greater amount of money on trips abroad than this country receives from foreign visitors. And the gap widened by €58 million during the last three months of 2003. Visitors to Ireland spent €803 million here but Irish tourists exceeded that by €58 million, spending €861 million abroad on trips.

The figures show the tourism industry bouncing back from the shockwaves of the Iraqi war, the SARS outbreak and a weak global economy.

In the three months to end-December, there were 1.360 million overseas visits to this country.

Irish visits abroad jumped by 9.5% to 1.074 million between October and December 2003.

Twelve months ago, with major instability in the Gulf, the outlook for Irish tourism was uncertain, the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism noted.

Tourism Minister John O’Donoghue congratulated the industry and agencies for “their great efforts in turning around a potentially grim scenario and achieving a level of performance better than several of our closest competitors”.

Visits to Ireland from Britain grew by 5.5%, with the number from the Continent up by 5.7%. Visits by US and Canadian citizens went up by 6.3%.

Irish visits to Britain during the fourth quarter of 2003 grew by 4.2% to 566,000, while the number travelling on Continental routes rose by 12.4%, from 388,000 to 438,000.

There was a 37.3% rise in the number of Irish residents travelling on transatlantic routes between October and end-December, from 51,000 visits to 70,000.