Commenting on today’s CSO figures for the nine months to the end of September 2016, Niall Gibbons, CEO of Tourism Ireland, said: “Today’s CSO figures confirm that overseas visitors to Ireland grew by +10% during January-September, or almost 600,000 extra visitors. And, more importantly for the Irish economy, revenue from overseas visitors to Ireland grew by +9% during this period, an additional €304 million compared with the first nine months of 2015. Within the total number of overseas visitors to Ireland, holiday visitors grew by +9% in the first nine months of 2016 – that’s 287,000 additional holiday visitors. I am pleased to see holidaymaker growth from our main market areas of Great Britain (+18%), Mainland Europe (+6%) and North America (+7%).
Niall Gibbons continued: “This was a strong performance and reflects the sentiment we’ve been hearing from our tourism industry partners, both overseas and here at home. We’ve just launched our marketing plans for 2017, which will see us build on this year’s growth to deliver €5.7 billion (+4.5%) in overseas tourism revenue to the economies north and south, by welcoming 10.6 million visitors.”
