(TAN): Over 650,000 overseas tourists visited Ireland in January 2020, up 0.5% compared to the same period a year ago.
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) released the data according to which 654,500 overseas visitors travelled to Ireland during the month.
Niall Gibbons, Chief Executive Officer of Tourism Ireland, said January accounts for 6% of total yearly arrivals.
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“Today’s figures from the CSO indicate that overseas arrivals increased slightly by +0.5% in January 2020, when compared to January of last year. However, it is early days yet – arrivals in the month of January represent around 6% of total annual arrivals,” he said.
Trips by Great Britain residents went up 0.1% to 266,900 while that of residents of European countries outside of the United Kingdom grew 0.2% to 232,000 – just 200 more people from the Great Britain visited Ireland in January, and 400 more residents from Europe excluding Great Britain arrived in Ireland during the month, vis-à-vis January 2019.
Arrivals from residents of the United States and Canada grew 2.9% to 108,400, though trips from other areas dropped 1% to 47,200.
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“Arrivals from North America grew by +2.9% in January, an extra 3,100 US and Canadian visitors. Arrivals from both Mainland Europe (+0.2%) and Britain (+0.1%) were flat on January last year; and arrivals from long-haul markets declined by -1%,” Gibbons added.
Residents from Ireland made 2.2% more overseas trips to 548,500 in January 2020, compared to the year earlier – 11,600 more Irish people travelled overseas last month in comparison to January 2019.
Overall, the number of trips Irish residents made to overseas and trips made to Ireland in January 2020 grew 1.2% to 1,203,000 vis-à-vis the comparable period a year ago.
Meanwhile, Gibbons said the country’s tourism sector could face a number of challenges in near future, some of them being the uncertainty around Brexit and the coronavirus outbreak.
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“Some of the challenges facing Irish tourism over the coming months include the outbreak of Covid-19 (coronavirus), the continued uncertainty around Brexit, as well as global economic unease. There’s also been a deterioration in air access capacity, with a -4% decline this winter,” Gibbons said.
He added that they were keeping an eye on the virus situation, and promoting the island in order to maintain the tourist inflow.
“Tourism Ireland continues to roll out an extensive first-half programme of promotions, which includes our ‘Fill Your Heart With Ireland’ campaign, to highlight the island of Ireland around the world; however, we will keep our programme under review. We are monitoring the outbreak of Covid-19 very closely and will respond, together with industry partners, to its impact on travel to the island of Ireland,” he added.
