More Irish go abroad than visitors to Ireland

A report in The Irish Independent says that Irish are taking flight like never before and it’s got nothing to do with emigration.

For the first time the number of Irish people travelling abroad, mainly to European sunspots on holiday and business, has outstripped the hordes of visitors flocking to our Ireland.

Affluent Irish globetrotters are also splashing out the cash – spending more than €1bn on holiday and business trips abroad in the first three months of the year.

The Irish dash to the sun comes as Australian tourist chiefs also reveal record numbers of Irish visitors travelling “Down Under”, with new figures from the Central Statistics Office showing a record 1,575,000 Irish visits overseas in the first quarter of the year – up 17% on the same period last year.

That’s 97,000 more than the number of overseas visits made to Ireland in the same quarter.

This is the first time since the CSO quarterly series began in 1990 that Irish visits abroad overtook the number of overseas visit to this country.

Locations in continental Europe proved the most popular destinations, with more than 841,000 trips, up 28% on the same period last year. Cross-channel routes were also busy, with 600,000 trips during the first three months of the year, a 7% increase.

Most of the trips – 890,000 – were for holiday or leisure while a further 365,000 foreign trips were to visit friends or relatives.

Irish travellers heading abroad also spread around their money, spending €1.14bn on foreign trips in the first three months of the year – €314m more than overseas visitors poured into the Irish economy in the same period.

While visitor numbers fell short of the numbers of Irish going abroad, there was a 6% increase in overseas visits to Ireland, rising to 1,478,000 in the first quarter.

The UK continues to make up the bulk of visitor traffic, though visits by British residents fell by 6% to 771,000.

Visits from other European countries jumped by a third to 496,000, while visits by US and Canadian residents grew by 4% to 156,000.

Meanwhile, latest figures show the number of Irish holidaymakers visiting Australia has reached an all-time high and according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, there were 62,000 Irish visitors to Australia in the 12 months to April, a 4% increase.

There has also been a 16% increase in Irish visitor numbers since the start of this year.

Tourism Australia’s Europe GM Rodney Harrex says they planned to continue their active marketing campaign in Ireland over the next 12 months.

Welcoming the latest CSO figures, Tourism Minister Seamus Brennan said he was delighted to see numbers up by over 6%.

One of the concerns in recent years was that the increase in overseas visitor numbers was not being matched by the increase in associated revenue.

However, the figures showed that the revenue being generated was actually increasing at a higher rate than the visitor numbers themselves – which was very good news for the tourist industry, he said.

Mr Brennan said that Tourism Ireland was undertaking its biggest ever marketing campaign in Britain this year which included spending €6m to highlight the attractions of Ireland.

A Report by The Mole and the Irish Independent.