Record year for tourism as 7.7 million visitors enjoy stay

OFFICIAL figures just published confirm 2006 as a record tourism year with 7.7 million visitors coming here.

But people in Ireland made 6.8 million trips abroad — more than four million of them to Britain. Trips abroad showed a 12% rise on 2005.

A British survey shows Ireland as the number one country for sports travel into Britain. It said 411,000 Irish visitors went there to watch or play sport last year.

The survey said the Irish spend, equal to 12% of the total by tourists, amounted to €1.3 million.

The figures, from the International Passenger Survey for English tourism body Enjoy England, said Irish visitors represented 17% of total visitor numbers coming to Britain.

A spokesperson said: “There is great Irish interest in English sport particularly soccer, rugby, horse racing and golf.”

Welcoming the surge in visitors to Ireland, Tourism Minister John O’Donoghue said the 10.5% increase in 2006 strongly exceeded the target set for the year.

“Indeed, these figures put us well on the way to meet the target set by the Tourism Policy Review Group to achieve visitor numbers of 10 million,” he said.

“All of our main markets show strong growth, but I am particularly pleased to see that the North American market has recorded a very strong recovery following a softening in 2005,” said the minister.

Just more than four million visitors came from Britain, traditionally our biggest tourist market, last year.

This represented a 6.1% increase.

But the biggest rise, of 19.3% came from mainland Europe which included the enlarged EU member countries.

The figures from the Central Statistics Office indicate that all of Ireland’s major markets turned in very healthy performances in 2006.

The North American market increased by 10.9% with more than one million visitors coming to Ireland.

The total number of visitors to Ireland during 2006 was 7,709,000.