Business as usual: Hoteliers chief confident despite further drop in tourism figures
It comes after
CSO data for the month of February showed a one-third decline
in visitors versus 2024, though prominent tourism bodies were hesitant to view the findings as a damning indictment of the industry.
Numbers visiting Ireland reduced by 15% in March to 441,200, compared to the same period last year, a trending decline in foreign visitor numbers first observed in September 2024.
Last month, UK tourists accounted for 41% of travellers into the country, while Americans made up 18%, with the majority (40%) of the total coming for holiday purposes.
Irish tourism advocates have pointed to a range of issues behind the trend, including economic uncertainty given political instability in the US, cost of living issues in the UK and Europe, and prices in Ireland.
Today's numbers show 528,100 foreign visitors came to Ireland last month, a 4% drop on April of last year, but a 14% increase on 2023.
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Notably, these visitors spent €375 million on their travels here, 10% less than in April 2024.
The data was collected from around 13,000 departing passengers at Irish ports and airports.
However, the new figures are not entirely representative of the state of the industry as a whole, according to the Irish Hotels Federation (IHF).
Its president, Michael Magner, says there is a discrepancy between the figures and the reality borne out on the ground.
'Our own industry figures, for example, show that hotels achieved average room occupancies of 77% in April compared with 74.5% for the same month last year,' Magner said.
'Meanwhile we have seen a 2% increase in bookings for the first four months of the year.
'From an industry perspective, this would suggest that overall tourism activity continues to hold up so far in 2025, despite the significant difficulties faced by tourism and hospitality businesses.'
Magner also expressed concern at the recorded 10% drop in tourist spend, a trend he says projects an 'enormous' challenge to the hospitality industry at large which he attributes to 'unsustainable increases in the cost of doing business right across our industry'.
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