Irish visits abroad down by 13%

IRISH holidaymakers are cutting back on overseas visits as the recession hits with the number of trips abroad down by 13% since the start of the year.

The internal market is also suffering with the number of foreign visitors in the first three months of 2009 down by 9% compared with last year.

It is estimated that Irish holidaymakers spent€1.3 billion on foreign travel so far this year, while visitors to Ireland contributed just €694m to the local economy. New figures from the Central Statistics Office show Irish people made 1.54 million overseas trips between January and March this year — a decrease of 222,000 trips on the same period in 2008.

It is the first decline in overseas visits in the first quarter of the year since 2000. In a further sign of travellers being more price conscious, traffic on cross-channel ferries between the Republic and Britain actually increased by 1% in the first quarter of 2009.

Meanwhile, the overall number of foreign visitors to Ireland has fallen by 140,000 in the first three months of 2009 to just over 1.4 million — a decline of 9%. Some of the fall-off is partially explained by the fact that Easter occurred later this year than in 2008.

However, the number of tourists from Britain has dropped over the period by 15%, while visitors from the US and Canada fell by 9%. More encouragingly, the number of visits from other Europeans increased by 2%.

Tourism accommodation providers are also being hit by the decline in the number of foreign visitors as their average length of stay has fallen slightly to 6.6 nights this year.

The number of nights spent in hotels dropped by 20% in the first quarter of 2009, while the average number of nights spent in all accommodation types fell by 12%.

Labour tourism spokesperson Mary Upton said the CSO figures showed the huge pressures that the tourism sector was facing. Ms Upton said the results made for “grim reading” across all sectors of the industry.

Ryanair branded the CSO results as further confirmation the Government was committing “tourism suicide” with its introduction of a €10 air transport tax and proposals to increase passenger charges at Dublin Airport.